TALKS TO 

SUNDAY SCHOOL TEACHERS 



LUTHER ALLAN WEIGLE 




Class JELVl5A^\ 

Book. ' ^ 4 

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COFiRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



TALKS TO SUNDAY-SCHOOL TEACHERS 
LUTHER ALLAN WEIGLE 



TALKS TO 
SUNDAY-SCHOOL TEACHERS 



BY 

LUTHER ALLAN WEIGLE 

HORACE BUSHNELL PROFESSOR OF CHRISTIAN NURTURE 

YALE UNIVERSITY 

AUTHOR OF "THE PUPIL AND THE TEACHER," 

"TRAINING THE DEVOTIONAL LIFE," ETC. 




NEW ^SJr YORK 
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 



'-,*■ 






COPYRIGHT, 1920, 
BY GEORGE H DORAN COMPANY 



APi< 2i 1320 



PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 



©CU565610 



PREFACE 

This book is in a sense a supplement to The 
Pupil and the Teacher, as it is my response to 
the request that I write in fuller and more con- 
crete detail concerning certain topics briefly re- 
ferred to in that book. 

It has, however, a body of its own, and is 
published in the hope that parents and Sunday 
school teachers may be helped by these talks to 
gain further insight into the psychology of boys 
and girls and a better understanding of some of 
the pedagogical problems involved in their re- 
ligious education. That it may be the better 
available for use by teacher-training or parents' 
classes, or as a basis for a series of Sunday school 
workers' conferences, questions for discussion and 
a brief bibliography are appended to each chapter. 

Thanks are due for permission to publish in 
this form, to The Teachers' Monthly, The Augs- 
burg Sunday School Teacher, The Sunday School 
Worker, The Sunday School Magazine, The Pil- 
grim Magazine, The Evangelical Teacher, and 
The Pilgrim Elementary Teacher, in which these 
articles originally appeared. I owe an especial 
acknowledgment to the Reverend J. M. Duncan, 



vi PREFACE 

D.D., Editor of the Sunday school publications 
of the Presbyterian Church in Canada, at whose 
request they were written. 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER PAGE 

I The Child as a Discoverer . n 

II A Bundle of Instincts .... 18 

III Children's Lies 24 

IV A Boy's Loyalty 35 

V The Age of Hero Worship ... 42 

VI When a Boy Wants to Go to Work 49 

VII Breaking Old Ties 56 

VIII When Doubts Come 63 

IX The Forming of Habits .... 72 

X The Development of the Will . 78 

XI The Roots of Law 85 

'■ XII How Religion Grows .... 93 

XIII Why a Trained Teacher? . . . 100 

XIV The Teacher's Knowledge of the 

Lesson 107 

XV The Teaching Process . . . . 114 

XVI How to Excite Interest . . . 121 

XVII Learning by Doing 128 

XVIII Attention: Its Nature and Laws 135 

XIX Illustrating the Lesson . . . 142 

vii 



Vlll 

CHAPTER 

XX 

XXI 

XXII 

XXIII 

XXIV 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

The Dramatic Method of Teaching 149 

The Purposes of Questioning . . 156 

Why Examinations? 164 

Applying the Lesson 172 

Class Instruction and Class Activ- 
ity 180 



TALKS TO SUNDAY-SCHOOL TEACHERS 



TALKS TO 
SUNDAY SCHOOL TEACHERS 

CHAPTER I 
THE CHILD AS A DISCOVERER 

Who can tell what a baby thinks? 
Who can follow the gossamer links 

By which the manikin feels his way 
Out from the shore of the great unknown, 
Blind, and wailing, and alone, 

Into the light of day? 

What does he think of his mother's eyes? 

What does he think of his mother's hair? 
What of the cradle-roof, that flies 

Forward and backward through the air? 

TIMES have changed since J. G. Holland wrote 
those lines. Cradles are frowned upon, wailing 
is no longer regarded as an inevitable minor accom- 
paniment, and psychology has actually begun to trace 
the "gossamer links." Yet one implication of the 
verses remains true. The child is a discoverer in 
what is to him a strange new world. Its paths are 
as uncharted as was the western sea for Columbus. 
Each day is a voyage in exploration. Things mat- 
ter-of-course to older folk tingle with newness to 

ii 



12 TALKS TO SUNDAY SCHOOL TEACHERS 

him; facts that the world has long known he must 
learn for himself. 

Nature has equipped him for it. Curiosity is 
one of the earliest, as it is one of the most perma- 
nent, of the human instincts. The normal child is 
a born adventurer. He is so built that he cannot 
remain politely inert in the presence of things that 
appeal to his senses. He is not only all eyes and 
ears, he is all hands and feet and restless activity 
as well. Just to have sensations is, as Professor 
Thorndike puts it, one of the natural satisfiers of 
human nature, and quite as natural is the instinct 
to be doing something with them. Mental empti- 
ness, sheer inactivity, irk us all. The child is bound 
to react to his sensations with the demand for more. 
And he does not passively await their coming; he 
pushes out in whatever ways his little body will per- 
mit to seek new experiences. 

Curiosity begins, perhaps, with the baby's stare, 
as early often as the second week. Miss Shinn tells, 
with approval, of her grandmother's rule, that you 
should never needlessly interrupt a baby's staring 
lest you hinder the development of the power of at- 
tention. Soon surprise and wonder appear, to be 
followed, as the little muscles permit, by active ob- 
servation, experiment and play. 

I remember watching a boy of eight months sit 
for what seemed a long time, just picking up a 
block from the floor and putting it down again, each 
time a little farther out, till he reached his limit and 
hitched along to begin again. It was the simplest 
sort of play, yet he was acquiring muscular control, 



THE CHILD AS A DISCOVERER IS 

not only of hand and arm, but of his whole body; he 
was developing space-perception and coordination 
of eye and hand, and he was learning some of the 
properties of blocks and floors. 

What an impossible task his education would be, 
were he not so made as to respond with action, 
with interest and experiment, to a sense-stimulus, — 
were he simply to sit like a lump of putty, waiting 
to have parent or teacher fold his little fingers 
around that block, stretch out his arm for him and, 
seek to direct his lagging eye! What is true of 
so simple a bit of baby play is true throughout the 
whole of childhood. The child's physical activity, 
his constant play, his eager observation and experi- 
ment are the instruments of development and dis- 
covery. 

The child's activity may, of course, become an- 
noying. We may be impelled to command quiet for 
our nerves' sake, or for his sake may put a stop 
to play too prolonged or too venturesome. It is but 
to be expected that the little investigator's experi- 
ments may at times be unwise, destructive, cruel or 
even dangerous. Children will taste anything, and 
they have no way of telling poison from food, or 
colic-producers from wholesome fruits. They will 
take anything to pieces that they can get apart; and 
the more hidden the mechanism of a toy, the greater 
the challenge to their spirit of discovery. One toy 
that we have never been able to keep whole in our 
house, though we have bought several, is a "come 
back" cylinder that bears no hint whatever of mech- 



14 TALKS TO SUNDAY SCHOOL TEACHERS 

anism on its surface, but mysteriously insists on roll- 
ing back to you when you start it rolling away. 

Smith and Hall tell of a little girl who cried 
bitterly after she had spoiled her doll by poking 
in its eyes, not because it was ruined, but because, 
she tearfully explained, "Now I can't ever find out 
what makes dolly shut her eyes. Won't you buy 
me another one so I can find out?" Like curiosity 
leads to such apparently cruel acts as forcing open 
the eyes of little kittens, breaking chickens' legs to 
learn how to mend them, or dissecting frogs to see 
how they are put together. One boy is reported 
who, at the time when a scientific man's experiment 
in fasting was much talked of, shut up his pet squir- 
rel to see how long it would live without food. 
Warnings of pain to himself, even, will not deter 
the little experimenter sometimes; he will try the 
forbidden thing and deliberately bring on the pain, 
to see how it feels. 

The getting of experiences, however, is but the 
beginning of the young discoverer's adventure. He 
must explore their relations as well; he is not con- 
tent till he understands his experiences- Man is, 
as Carlyle put it, a cause-hunting animal. Very 
early indeed, the child begins to compare things with 
one another, to observe likenesses, differences, con- 
nections, and sequences, to draw conclusions and to 
seek causes. To sensory curiosity is added rational 
curiosity. And to play, observation and experiment 
as methods of discovery, he adds questions put to 
his elders — infinitely many and of all sorts: What? 
Why? How? What for? Where from? What 



THE CHILD AS A DISCOVERER 15 

makes it? Who made it? What does so-and-so 
mean? 

Examples need not be cited. We have all had to 
meet children's questions. They are at times aim- 
less and random, the product not of real curiosity 
so much as of fatigue or peevishness, — the endless 
repetition of "Why?" questions is often of this 
type. But most often they reveal how puzzling to 
children are things that we take for granted, and 
how well the little investigators can reason with the 
data at their command. Professor Sully tells of a 
boy not yet four who asked, "Why don't we see two 
things with our two eyes?" and of another just past 
that age who inquired, "What is the good of bees?" 
When told that they make honey, he responded with 
the pertinent query, "Then do they bring it for us 
to eat?" R , aged five, came home from a kin- 
dergarten class where he had been told of the earth's 
shape and motion, eager to have it explained: "Why 
don't we fall off when the world is moving so fast?" 

That children should ask hard questions about 
things metaphysical and theological is to be ex- 
pected. They are deeply interested in origins, in 
birth and death, and in the God whom they cannot 
see and about whom we tell them so falteringly. 
Their reasoning here too is often surprisingly direct 
and sound. Sully tells about a boy of four who 
asked, "If I had gone upstairs, could God make it 
that I hadn't?" and about another of seven who 
asked, "Why doesn't God kill the devil, and then 
there would be no more wickedness in the world?" 
R , aged five, rummaging about at his grand- 



16 TALKS TO SUNDAY SCHOOL TEACHERS 

mother's, found an old book about the Johnstown 
flood, and insisted on having the story. He aston- 
ished his Sunday-school teacher some months later 
by stoutly maintaining that God broke his promise 
to Noah, about which she was telling them — "How 
about the Johnstown flood?" "But, dear, God 
didn't send that; men made that dam such that it 
broke." "Yes," he replied, "but God sent the rain 
that made it break." 

It is the privilege of us older folk to protect and 
guide the little discoverer, to foster rather than to 
repress his eager spirit of investigation, to provide 
materials for educative play, observation and experi- 
ment, and out of our larger experience so to answer 
his questions that he will be led to that knowledge 
of truth that makes men free. 

FOR INVESTIGATION AND DISCUSSION 

1. Give examples which have come under your ob- 
servation of children's play motived by curiosity or the 
desire to experiment. Of constructive play. Of destruc- 
tiveness. 

2. What sort of toys would you suggest for children 
to encourage inventiveness and foster the spirit of in- 
quiry, yet not encourage destructiveness ? 

3. Give some examples of children's questions which 
are hard to answer. How would you answer these ques- 
tions ? 

4. Name some possible harmful results of a policy of 
repression such as "Kfeep still," "Don't ask foolish ques- 
tions," etc. 

5. The opportunity which children's curiosity affords 



THE CHILD AS A DISCOVERER 17 

to the teacher, and ways in which the teacher may stimulate 
and use it. 

FOR FURTHER READING 

The article by Smith and Hall is entitled "Curiosity 
and Interest," and is found in G. S. Hall: "Aspects of 
Child Life and Education." Other articles are H. W. 
Brown: "Some Records of the Thought and Reasonings 
of Children," Pedagogical Seminary, II, pp. 358-396, and 
H. L. Clapp: "The Educative Value of Children's Ques- 
tions," Popular Science Monthly, XLIX, pp. 799-809. 
James Sully: "Studies of Childhood" has a body of con- 
crete material, interpreted by a great psychologist. A thor- 
oughly scientific statement of the facts is found in E. L. 
Thorndike: "The Original Nature of Man," which is 
followed by Norsworthy and Whitley: "The Psychology 
of Childhood." 



CHAPTER II 
A BUNDLE OF INSTINCTS 

THE little human animal, like every other, is 
born going. He is already wound up. His 
lungs expand and contract; his heart is pumping 
away; his stomach is ready to handle food. These 
organic, vital activities he does not initiate. They 
begin themselves. The organism possesses them by 
nature. They are the very condition of life. 

There are many other activities, not so obviously 
vital as these, for which nature winds him up quite 
as thoroughly — yes, and sets him to go off at the 
proper time for each. He will suck when brought 
to the breast as unfailingly as his lungs will begin 
to work upon contact with the air. He will cry from 
hunger or discomfort, clasp anything that touches 
his fingers or toes, carry to his mouth whatever he 
can grasp, in time smile when smiled at, later grow 
afraid when left alone or in the dark, manifest 
anger and affection, walk, run, play, question, imi- 
tate, collect things, pull things apart, put them to- 
gether again, take pleasure in being with friends, 
act shy before strangers, find a chum, belong to a 
"gang" or "bunch," quarrel, fight, become recon- 
ciled, and some day fall in love with one of the op- 
posite sex. These, and many more, are just his 



A BUNDLE OF INSTINCTS 19 

natural human ways. He does not of purpose ini- 
tiate them any more than he initiates breathing or 
heartbeat. He does these things because he is so 
born and built. They are his instincts. 

The child cannot do all these things at birth, of 
course. Each instinct manifests itself in its own 
time, as he grows and develops and meets the situ- 
ations that call it forth. .The point is that he does 
not need to be introduced to any of these modes of 
behavior or have it started for him. He will just 
naturally find himself doing it some day, likely with- 
out knowing why. He inherits these tendencies as 
part of the native organization of his nervous sys- 
tem. It is so made that inevitably certain situations 
call forth these characteristic responses. 

The instincts of many animals low in the scale of 
life are marvelously complete. They provide for a 
complex series of actions that fit, with mechanical 
precision, the details of certain situations in which 
the animal is placed. Lloyd Morgan tells of a bee- 
tle that lays its eggs near the entrance to the gal- 
leries of a mason bee. These are hatched out as 
active larvae, which in the spring fasten themselves 
to the bodies of the bee-drones as they pass from 
the galleries. There they cling till the nuptial flight 
of the bees, when as the insects mate they pass from 
the body of the drone to that of the female bee. 
Again they wait until the female lays her eggs; 
then they spring into the cells and consume eggs and 
honey while undergoing the metamorphoses which 
issue finally in their becoming perfect beetles. This 
series of actions, it is plain, could never be learned 



20 TALKS TO SUNDAY SCHOOL TEACHERS 

by imitation, or taught by one beetle to another. It 
is done only once in the lifetime of each beetle ; and 
it must at that time be done perfectly, else the beetle 
will not live. The instinct in this case is precise and 
complete; it is what Herbert Spencer called a "com- 
pound reflex." Every detail in the series is pro- 
vided for, and takes place as mechanically and nat- 
urally as the action of heart or lungs in us. 

Our human instincts are not so detailed or com- 
plete. The rule seems to be that animals are cared 
for by nature plus parents. When parents do noth- 
ing, nature does all; but when parents can or ought 
to be depended upon, nature leaves much to them. 
The little beetle never sees its mother or father, 
or even knows that it has any: its instincts therefore 
provide for its welfare in so wonderfully complete 
a way. The human baby, on the other hand, re- 
ceives years of devoted parental care and its in- 
stincts are correspondingly vague and indefinite. It 
never could survive if left to itself. 

The point is not that the human instincts retreat 
in the face of parental endeavor or that they abdi- 
cate to reason. It is simply that they are large and 
rough-hewn, with many details left blank; they lack 
the precision and completeness that the instincts of 
some lower animals possess. Instinct leads the bee 
to build a honeycomb, and provides for both mate- 
rial and pattern; it leads the bird to build a nest, 
and the beaver a dam, with less of specific direction; 
it impels the child to constructive play, but what 
and how the child shall build, it does not determine. 
Instinct leads the squirrel to collect nuts; it impels 



A BUNDLE OF INSTINCTS 21 

the child to collect — almost anything, Human in- 
stincts do not so much provide particular things to 
do, as impel to general types of action or feeling. 
The details are left to be filled in by parental train- 
ing and by experience. Often they provide simply 
the innate capacity for some line of action or study, 
or the predisposition to some type of emotion. 

This indefinite character of our innate tendencies 
makes possible their application to an infinitely wider 
variety of situations than could be met by instincts 
of a more mechanical sort. Unless the beetle 
chances to meet just the precise condition for which 
its instinct fits it, it will perish. But man, once given 
the protection infancy requires, is able to meet 
wholly new situations and conquer adverse circum- 
stance. His instincts are capable of intelligent adap- 
tation. 

The fact is that intelligence and self-control, rea- 
son and will, grow and develop within our instincts, 
rather than outside of them. No instinct, once used, 
is after that as vague and indefinite as it was before. 
It has added two things to itself, a habit and an 
idea. Because it has this time acted in some definite 
way, it will tend thereafter to work that way again, 
in accord with the law of habit. And because its 
action has issued in some consciously experienced re- 
sult, the idea of that result remains and will help 
to guide future action. The natural tendency need 
no longer be followed blindly. Every time that an 
instinct is used, therefore, it becomes more definite 
and more intelligent. The mature man, if he has 
lived rightly, has come to understand his instincts; 



%% TALKS TO SUNDAY SCHOOL TEACHERS 

they have grown into habits, sentiments, principles 
and ideals, and each has fallen into its place in a 
rational unity of personal life. 

The child stands at the beginning of this process 
of development. He is a little bundle of instincts 
which he does not yet understand, and of which he is 
not master. The one thing certain is that he will re- 
spond with action to the world about him rather 
than with mere contemplation, and that his actions 
will conform in a general way to the inherited hu- 
man type. He will do the same sort of things that 
children have done for centuries before him, and 
will likely do for centuries to come. Here, then, is 
our opportunity and responsibility as parents and 
teachers. We do not need to wind children up to 
get them to do things ; they are already going. We 
do need to furnish the right material and stimulus, 
and to observe and guide their natural reactions. 
These instincts form the starting-point for all educa- 
tion and control. Some native tendencies we shall 
seek to preserve and perpetuate; some we shall do 
our best to get rid of; many we shall seek to modify 
or redirect. But, in any case, we shall succeed just 
in so" far as we begin by understanding what nature 
has put there in the first place. 



FOR INVESTIGATION AND DISCUSSION 

I. What is meant by instinct as a characteristic of human 
beings? Make out the best list that you can of human in- 
stincts, and classify them if possible. Compare the lists 



A BUNDLE OF INSTINCTS 23 

and classifications of Kirkpatrick, McDougall and Thorn- 
dike. 

2. In what respects are human instincts like, and in 
what respects unlike, the instincts of animals? 

3. What is the relation of human instincts to. habits, 
ideas and ideals? 

4. Methods of control and education of human instincts. 

5. Why is it essential that parents and teachers should 
understand and enlist the instincts of children ? 

FOR FURTHER READING 

William James: the chapter on "Instincts" in "Princi- 
ples of Psychology"; E. A. Kirkpatrick: "Fundamentals 
of Child Study"; William McDougall: "An Introduc- 
tion to Social Psychology"; E. L. Thorndike: "The Ori- 
ginal Nature of Man" and "Education." 



CHAPTER III 

CHILDREN'S "LIES" 

ALL Cretans are liars" was an old-world prov- 
erb that found its way even into the Bible. 
There are those who would have us think that chil- 
dren are like Cretans in that respect. Perez thought 
that he could notice, even from the cradle, "signs of 
an innate disposition to concealment, to dissimula- 
tion, to ruse." Montaigne held that "falsehood 
grows as fast as children do." 

Much depends, of course, on what we mean by 
a lie. Conscious falsehoods, told with intent to de-> 
ceive, are no more natural for children than they 
ought to be for grown-ups. But misstatements, ex- 
aggerations, fancies mixed with facts, are both com- 
mon and natural. In general, these are not to be 
taken as evidence of moral delinquency or of heredi- 
tary taint. They may show simply that the child 
has not yet succeeded in straightening out his experi- 
ences, or that he does not fully understand his obli- 
gation to speak the truth. 

Sincerity is natural, both for children and for 
grown-ups who have not been spoiled. But no hu- 
man instinct prevents error, or prompts one without 
fail to tell the truth. The difference between fact 
and not-fact has to be learned; the ideal and the 



CHILDREN'S "LIES" 25 

habit of truth-telling are acquired in the course of 
experience, through education and training. 

I. Imaginative lies. Many, perhaps most, of the 
lies of younger children result from their confusion 
of imagination and reality. The boundary line be- 
tween fact and fancy, to us older folk so clear, is 
very vague for them. Indeed, they begin with no 
line at all. There is no intrinsic difference between 
a bit of imagination and the sensation of which it 
is the reproduction. The image may be as vivid, 
clear and coercive as its archetype. Dreams may 
have every semblance of reality. The difference be- 
comes manifest only in their contexts. The sensa- 
tion is linked up with other experiences in a consist- 
ent and coherent order; the image is somewhere in- 
consistent with the experiences that go before and 
after it. Reality has no breaks; but dreams are 
bound somewhere to break with reality, if only when 
we wake to find ourselves in bed. Have a dream 
that links itself in memory with a previous dream or 
two, and you may find yourself at a loss to know 
whether you dreamed it or it actually happened. 

Now a little child is often in somewhat this state 
of confusion. At first, he lacks entirely a basis upon 
which to mark off imagination from reality. He 
takes his mental images at face value; they are as 
real to him as sensations. He has not had experi- 
ence enough to discriminate the probable from the 
improbable, the consistent and coherent from the 
wild and fanciful. The imagined bear behind the 
door stirs him to fear as readily and as really as the 
actual dog that jumps out to bark at him. Only 



26 TALKS TO SUNDAY SCHOOL TEACHERS 

gradually, as knowledge grows and widens, does he 
come to realize the difference between those experi- 
ences that "hang together" and "stay put" (and 
hence are real), and those other experiences whose 
contexts are so shifting and uncertain as to betray 
their imaginary character. The child's ability to 
discriminate fact from fancy develops slowly, and 
depends always upon the amount and kind of ex- 
perience that he has had. Many a misstatement 
is honest enough a product of his own lack of clear- 
ness at this point. 

There is sound psychology, therefore, in the fa- 
miliar story of the little girl who, having insisted 
that there was a lion in the front yard, was ordered 
by her mother to go upstairs and to ask God to 
forgive her for lying. In a few minutes she returned 
happily with the news: "God said, 'Never you 
mind, Mary, that big dog pretty near fooled me 
too.' " Mrs. Fisher tells of a little girl who was 
thrown into a panic of fear at the sight of her fa- 
ther masquerading as a giant, in spite of the fact 
that he had explained everything to her beforehand 
and had shown her the costume he was to wear. "I 
knew it was just father," she explained when she re- 
covered; "I knew that, but I thought it might be a 
giant." 

2. Suggested lies. Imaginative lies are often sug- 
gested to children. Sully reports a child who, be- 
ing asked by his mother who had told him some- 
thing, answered "Dolly." Her question put into his 
mind the idea that some one had told him, and there 
was the doll which was his constant playmate — what 



CHILDREN'S "LIES" 27 

more natural than that his imagination should seize 
upon the doll as the source of his information? A 
child of three, seeing a cough syrup that she liked 
being administered to another child, asked for some, 
claiming to be sick too and pretending to cough. 
No grown-up who feels like coughing when he hears 
some one else cough can deny the probability that 
this was not so much conscious deception as sug- 
gested illusion. L , aged three, when he hears 

some one relate an especially interesting experience, 
is likely forthwith to repeat it as having happened 
to himself, without the least trace of shame and with 
complete disregard of the fact that everybody knows 
that it did not. 

3. Lies of exaggeration. Children incline natur- 
ally to put things strongly, entirely aside from any 
ulterior motive to do so. Their narratives of real 
occurrences are likely to have more of color and 
contrast than was actually there. They generalize 
readily and somewhat recklessly. Their speech runs 
easily to plurals. In all of which, of course, they 
are not so very much unlike many adults. 

4. Play lies. The lies of which we have thought 
thus far are believed, or at least more than half 
believed, by the children who tell them. What may 
be called play lies are not so believed, though they 
may be quite as innocent. They include the make- 
believe of dramatic play, where the child is con- 
scious of playing a part; lies told to tease or shock 
or surprise some one else; and pretended secrets. 
R , aged five, from time to time meets his fa- 
ther with some story of his own brave deed or 



28 TALKS TO SUNDAY SCHOOL TEACHERS 

tragic mishap, only to end up after a little while 
with: "But I didn't really, daddy; I just wanted to 
see what you would say." 

5. Lies of self-interest. More serious are the lies 
that children tell in self-interest, or for self-protec- 
tion or self-defense. For them, as for older persons, 
the lie may be a means to the gratification of selfish 
ends, or a ready refuge in time of trouble. It is 
possible that our very measures of discipline, if too 
stern and unyielding, may drive them to lie. When 

I asked R the other day what was the cause 

of some trouble in the playroom, he wanted to know 
whether it would be safe for him to tell the truth : 
"But, daddy, will you spank me if I tell you what 
I did?" 

6. Lies of rivalry and boasting. "To put up a 
front" seems natural to all ages. All who have read 
"Tom Sawyer" will remember Mark Twain's char- 
acteristic description of Tom and the new boy in 
town picking a fight, each threatening the other with 
the vengeance of a non-existent big brother. HalL 
and Smith, in their study of "showing off," give 
many examples of lies of this type. One child boast- 
ed that she had had a fever so high that it cracked 
the doctor's thermometer; another, that he was go- 
ing to have a thousand dollars to spend on the day 
when the show came to town. A pathetic "front" 
is that of the little Fresh-air Fund child, who told 
her hosts that her father rode around in a carriage 
with a span of horses — the truth being that her 
father drove an ice-wagon. "Oh, that's nothing," 
retorted one in answer to another's tale of good 



CHILDREN'S "LIES" 29 

fortune; "I went to Mexico last summer, and at the 
place where I was all I had to do was to pick up 
all the diamonds I could carry. Some of them were 
blue and some of them were red. I have a blue one 
home, as big as a hickorynut. M 

7. Privileged lies. Many children conceive their 
obligation to speak the truth to depend upon person- 
al relations. The truth is due, they feel, to father 
and mother, to friends and chums ; but not to those 
to whom they are bound by no such ties of mutual 
confidence and good-will. It is one's privilege to lie 
to enemies, strangers or mere acquaintances. When 
I reproved R one day for teasing a maid, put- 
ting it on the ground that he might make her feel 
badly, he replied, "Well, she doesn't belong to our 
family." This tendency is fostered by well-meaning 
parents and teachers who put all emphasis upon the 
children's personal relation to themselves, to the 
neglect of the development of right ideals of impar- 
tial honesty, justice and truth. 

8. Lies to do good. Older children, who have 
come to understand what truth is, are yet often 
ready to justify a lie provided it be told to do good 
to some one else. In their own practical experience, 
this generally means a lie told to help some other 
child escape blame or punishment: theoretically, 
they will bring to mind, like many older reasoners 
than they, such cases as lies to save reputation, or 
property, or life, the physician's lie to help his pa- 
tient, and the like. Older folk foster this tendency 
by the opprobrium that many so undiscriminatingly 
put upon tale-bearing. There are many grown-up 



30 TALKS TO SUNDAY SCHOOL TEACHERS 

people whose ideas concerning their own behavior, 
as well as concerning the training of children, are 
unclear and confused at this point. 

9. Lies of mental reservation. Older children will 
at times appease their consciences when lying by 
making inaudible reservations, such as "maybe," "in 
my mind," "over the left," "nit," "don't you think 
it," "I don't mean it." They ignore the fact that 
these are not open to the person to whom the lie is 
told, and regard their duty to the truth as fulfilled by 
what takes place within their own minds. Some- 
times such palliating mental reservations are annexed 
to promises which the child really intends to fulfill," 
as a sort of prudent provision for a possible future 
desire to break them. 

Children have odd little oaths of their own, for- 
mulas of affirmation which they offer and accept as 
guaranties of the truth of a statement. Small, in 
his study on "The Instinct for Certainty," has col- 
lected many of these, such as: "Honest"; "Really 
and truly"; "Honor bright"; "Cross my heart"; 
"Hope to die"; "Sure as you live"; "Honest and 
true, black and blue, lay me down and cut me in 
two." 

To deal with children's lies requires sympathy and 
patience. There is no one prescription. 

Certainly we must not lie to them in return. A 
parent who came seeking counsel as to how to deal 
with his little daughter's falsehoods, reported that 
he had told her among other things that if she did 
not stop lying a great big dragon-fly ("devil's darn- 



CHILDREN'S "LIES" 31 

ing-needle") would come some day and sting her so 
that she would die ! 

We must first of all diagnose our case. We must 
understand what sort of lies the child is telling, and 
try to discover why. And then we should set to 
work patiently to train him to observe and describe 
things as they are, to help him to bound off fact from 
fancy, to lead him to understand what truth is and 
why it is the basis of all social relations, and to beget 
within him the ideal and the habit of sincerity and 
straightforwardness. 

Above all, we shall ourselves both tell and live 
the truth. That means that we shall be consistent 
as well as sincere with our children, and that we 
shall be careful not to make hasty or indifferent 
promises, which we shall afterward forget or break 
on the score of some consideration which we deem 
to be more important, but which the child cannot 
appreciate. Some one has well said that the funda- 
mental matter here is not so much what the parents' 
motives really are, as what they seem to the child to 
be. 

It is a mistake to use soft and ambiguous terms 
for a lie, such as u fib" or "story." Children should 
be brought up to recognize and reverence truth as 
truth and to think of any conscious deviation from 
the truth in word or deed as a lie. Professor F. C. 
Sharp in his "Education for Character" well de- 
fines a lie as "an attempt to create in another per- 
son a belief which we ourselves do not hold." Even 
little children can understand the spirit of that defi- 
nition. The softer terms are mischievous just be- 



32 TALKS TO SUNDAY SCHOOL TEACHERS 

cause they tend to blur it over. The word "story" 
is particularly objectionable because of its constant 
use in its primary sense to denote imaginative tales 
or narratives of fact. "Tell me a story" is the eager 
and oft-repeated request of every child who knows 
what it is to climb on father's knee or into mother's 
lap. What confusion then must reign in his little 
mind if that same father or mother forbids him to 
tell stories. 

"But," some fond mother will object, "I cannot 
bring myself to call my little girl a liar." Certainly 
not, but that is not our counsel. There is a great 
difference between telling a lie and being a liar. 
For the first word refers to a single act, and the 
second to a settled disposition of character. Most 
children tell lies at some time or other; very few of 
them are liars. 

In some families and schools, children are so un- 
wisely dealt with that they are actually tempted to 
lie. They are constantly asked incriminating ques- 
tions; they are without discrimination branded as 
tale-bearers if they tell the truth about any one 
other than themselves; they are prohibited from 
asking freely for what they want; they are forced 
to offer apologies and to pay compliments which 
they do not feel; they are punished according to the 
letter of the law for every misdeed, without regard 
to the innocence of their intent or the honesty of 
their confession. All these are ways of tempting, 
even of training children to lie. It is bad, moreover, 
for a home or a social group of any sort to permit 



CHILDREN'S "LIES" 33 

many secrets among its members. Every secret is 
pregnant with temptations to lie. 

Finally, we should see to it, in so far as we can, 
that the child's lies do not pay. As long as he can 
"get away with them" and by lying gain immunity 
or personal advantage, he is thereby encouraged to 
lie. Children should be brought early to realize that 
the way of the transgressor, in this respect, is hard. 
Punishments of an arbitrary sort will not do this. 
One cannot scare a child into truthfulness. The ap- 
peal to fear is likely but to render him more ready, 
in any hard situation, to seek refuge in a lie. But 
punishments that are naturally and logically con- 
nected with the offense will help him to understand 
the weakness and worthlessness of lying. The best 
punishments, in general, are those that foreshorten 
and materialize the inevitable moral consequences 
of the wrong deed. In case of lying, this principle 
means that we should rely for the most part upon 
such punishments as will beget within the child's 
mind a sense of the lack of confidence in himself and 
in his word, which is the natural result of his readi- 
ness to lie. At the same time, we must be sure to 
leave open to the child a way of salvation, and to 
hold before his mind the possibility of his rein- 
statement in the confidence of ourselves and others. 



FOR INVESTIGATION AND DISCUSSION 

1. What is a lie? Compare your definition with Pro- 
fessor Sharp's. 

2. Give examples of children's lies which have come 



34 TALKS TO SUNDAY SCHOOL TEACHERS 

under your observation, and classify them according to the 
text. Do you find some which you cannot classify under 
these headings? 

3. May parents unintentionally encourage children to 
lie? How? 

4. The problem of tale-bearing, in its relation to truth- 
telling. 

5. How would you deal with lies of each of the several 
types described in the chapter? 

6. How would you punish lying? 

7. Should a child who has done wrong be punished if 
he confesses the truth? 



FOR FURTHER READING 

Good articles are by G. S. Hall 
Pedagogical Seminary, I, pp. 211-218; N. Oppenheim: 
"Why Children Lie," Popular Science Monthly, XLVII, 
PP- 372-387; E. P. St. John: "Veracity," Pedagogical 
Seminary, XV, pp. 246-270. F. C. Sharp formulates an 
exceedingly suggestive list of questions in "Education for 
Character," pp. 302-306. W. H. Winch: "Children's 
Perceptions" gives the results of experiments upon children's 
power to observe with accuracy. Discussions of the gen- 
eral moral problem are R. L. Stevenson: "Virginibus 
Puerisque," pp. 68-86, and R. E. Speer: "The Marks of 
a Man," chapter I. 



CHAPTER IV 
A BOY'S LOYALTY 

WHAT do we mean by loyalty? Patriotism 
was one's first answer in the days of war. 
In home and workshop, on farm and railway, as well 
as in camp and trench, on sea and in the air, the 
nation called us, every one, to service. 

Not all loyalty is in war time, however; nor is 
one's country the only object to inspire it. In Tiis 
wonderful little book, u The Philosophy of Loyalty," 
Professor Royce defines loyalty as "the willing and, 
practical and thoroughgoing devotion of a person to 
a cause." He cites as an example of such' loyalty 
the Speaker of the British House of Commons, who, 
when King Charles I, seeking to arrest certain of its 
members, inquired whether he espied them, an- 
swered, "Your Majesty, I am the Speaker of this 
House, and, being such, I have neither eyes to see 
nor tongue to speak save as this House shall com- 
mand." 

To do one's full duty, then, to live up to one's 
job, to serve one's cause, whatever it be, in whole- 
hearted, unswerving fidelity, is loyalty. We think 
of Paul, — "This one thing I do" ; of Lincoln's letter 
to Horace Greeley, "My paramount object in this 
struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to 

35 



36 TALKS TO SUNDAY SCHOOL TEACHERS 

save or to destroy slavery"; of the engineer who 
seeks to the last to avert or temper the collision 
which may cost him his life; of the telephone girls 
and wireless operators who, in the face of sudden 
disaster, remain at their instruments, to send out 
warnings and appeals; of the captain in stricken 
Halifax who fought and conquered the fire upon a 
second munition ship which had been deserted by its 
crew. We think, too, of the countless ordinary folk, 
fathers and mothers, preachers, teachers, profes- 
sional and business men, clerks and workmen, who, 
in quiet devotion, live and serve each in his own 
way. Loyalty is not always, or even often, spectacu- 
lar. It is an every-day virtue. It underlies all real 
achievement; it is the substance of all good charac- 
ter. To be loyal is to serve the ideal, whatever the 
field in which that service may lie. 

Besides loyalty to country and loyalty to duty 
there is another sort, — loyalty to persons. It is the 
loyalty of trust and affection, begotten in intimate 
personal relation or in the more or less distant ad- 
miration of hero-worship. It is the loyalty of lov- 
ers, of friends, of parent and child, of teacher and 
pupil, of leader and follower. 

Loyalty is a natural human virtue. Its roots may 
be traced far back in the life of childhood. Chil- 
dren's affection for others ; their desire to help ; their 
instinct to protect and care for dolls, animal pets 
and younger children ; their obedience ; their idealiz- 
ing imagination; their growing interest in construc- 
tive activities ; their developing patience, persistence 
and self-control; — these are the beginnings of loy- 



A BOY'S LOYALTY 37 

alty. Just beginnings, of course ; and beginnings that 
may be turned and modified to almost any sort of 
end. The roots of loyalty are natural; the quality 
of their fruit is determined by cultivation, or by the 
lack of it. Much, I had almost said everything, 
depends upon us older folk. It is our business, in 
dealing with early and middle childhood, not to ap- 
peal to or try to use a loyalty not yet developed, nor 
to seek to awaken loyalty before its basis is laid in 
experience, but rather to cultivate in the child such 
habits and ideals as may enter helpfully into the de- 
velopment of the loyalty that is to be. 

In later childhood and early adolescence loyalty 
blossoms forth in rich promise. From ten to sixteen 
is the age of spontaneous social organizations, such 
as clubs and "gangs." Boys no longer play alone, 
or with older folk; they seek companions of their 
own age, and go about in bunches. Their games 
call for team play, with its cooperation and its sub- 
ordination of the individual to the good of the 
whole. They formulate their own laws, formally or 
informally, and have their own code of honor. Each 
group constitutes a social unit whose members are 
bound in mutual loyalty. They will stand by one an- 
other through thick and thin, and they will stand 
by the ideals embodied in their code. They will keep 
their word in strictest fidelity, to one another and 
to those whom the group recognizes as friends and 
"square"; and they will not "squeal" though the 
heavens fall. Loyalty is the gang's fundamental vir- 
tue; disloyalty is the unpardonable sin which leads 
inevitably to expulsion. 



38 TALKS TO SUNDAY SCHOOL TEACHERS 

In his most interesting, if somewhat extreme book, 
"The Boy and His Gang," Puffer holds that we must 
look upon the gang as nature's training school for 
the social virtues. "Only by associating himself with 
other boys can any youth learn the knack of getting 
on with his fellow men; acquire and practice cooper- 
ation, self-sacrifice, loyalty, fidelity, team play; and 
in general prepare himself to become the efficient 
citizen of a democracy. Nature has given the boy 
the gang instincts for the sake of making easy for 
him the practice of the gang virtues." 

It is a crucial time in the boy's moral development. 
He is reaching beyond the life of the home into that 
of school and play-ground, forest, field and city 
street. At no time does adult influence seem to 
count for so little, just because his new friendships 
count for so much. He cares more for what the 
fellows do and say than for what older folk think. 
He is beginning to take the ordering of life into his 
own hands, and is guided by such public opinion as 
is open to him. The father and mother who fail 
to recognize this function of the boy's friendships, 
who, impatient and unsympathetic, simply "put 
their foot down," stand pat on the rules and pre- 
cepts of childhood, and try to keep their boy "tied 
to his mother's apron-strings," only engender a con- 
flict of loyalties within him, in which the home loyal- 
ties are very likely to lose out. 

That does not mean, however, that it is the part 
of wisdom simply to let boys go their own way in 
these "gang" years. Something very like that has 
been proposed by certain advocates of the so-called 



A BOY'S LOYALTY 39 

recapitulation theory, which asserts that the devel- 
opment of the individual recapitulates in brief the 
stages through which the development of the race 
has passed. Until eight or nine, they hold, the child 
is essentially non-social; in the gang age, his instincts 
and impulses are those of primitive man. And we 
are asked to believe that the surest way to get rid 
of what is undesirable in these impulses, and to pro- 
mote a healthy, normal development, is just to let 
them have their fling for a few years. The mischief 
of boyhood, so runs the theory, is cathartic; it is na- 
ture's way of getting the ancestral poison out of the 
boy's system. 

This is dangerous pedagogy. Exercise is far more 
likely to fix than to eliminate undesirable tendencies. 
The law of habit none can doubt or escape ; but the 
principle of catharsis, I believe, exists chiefly in the 
imagmation of its advocates. 

We shall neither repress the gang, then, nor let it 
go its own way; we shall seek to understand and en- 
list it. Its virtues are sound, but they stand in need 
of enlightenment and expansion. Its code of honor 
is to be respected, however inadequate it may seem 
to our larger experience. Its group loyalty is to be 
fostered and directed, for the sake of the larger loy- 
alties that are yet to be. 

We must help the boy to grow in loyalty, to in- 
corporate older loyalties into new, lesser loyalties 
into greater. We must help him pass from loyalties 
which are personal merely, to those which involve 
devotion to causes and ideals, impartial, impersonal 
and eternal in their worth. We must help him to 



40 TALKS TO SUNDAY SCHOOL TEACHERS 

practice loyalty, and to understand that real loyalty 
is never mere enthusiasm, red fire, speeches or even 
heroic acts ; but that it is rather a steady, thorough- 
going habit of devotion to whatever one has under- 
taken to do in the world. Much of this help we 
can only begin to give in the "gang" years, for a 
large part of the boy's education in loyalty will take 
place in later adolescence and in young manhood, as 
he faces the responsibilities of mature life. Who 
of us, indeed, could say that his own education in 
loyalty has yet been finished? 



FOR INVESTIGATION AND DISCUSSION 

1. Describe some cases which have come under your 
observation which prove that loyalty is an everyday virtue. 

2. Describe some of the games which help to cultivate 
loyalty. Discuss the importance of organized games and 
their bearing upon loyalty. 

3. Discuss the advantages and disadvantages of the gang. 
What should be the relation of parents and teachers to the 
spontaneous social life of boys? 

4. Is it possible for a boy to become too loyal to certain 
causes or to certain friends? How can you as parent or 
teacher help him to develop larger, truer loyalties. 

5. The recapitulation theory, and its validity. What is 
the principle of catharsis in pedagogy, and what do you 
think of its truth? 

FOR FURTHER READING 

Josiah Royce: "The Philosophy of Loyalty" is a book 
which every teacher ought to know. J. A. Puffer: "The 



A BOY'S LOYALTY 41 

Boy and His Gang" and W. B. Forbush: "The Boy Prob- 
lem" give concrete studies of boy-life at this age. The re- 
capitulation theory and the principle of catharsis may be 
found stated in G. S. Hall: "Adolescence," and criticized 
in E. L. Thorndike : "The Original Nature of Man," pp. 
245-282, and G. A. Coe: "A Social Theory of Religious 
Education," chapter 12. 



CHAPTER V 
THE AGE OF HERO WORSHIP 

IT was early October on a mid-western gridiron, 
and between halves of the first big game of the 
season. My neighbor on the bleachers, a boy of 
thirteen or fourteen, turned eagerly toward me. 
"Say, I wish I knew what the Harvard score is by 
this time." "Harvard?" I answered, surprised. 
"What do you know about Harvard? I thought you 
were a rooter for our team right here." "I am, sir; 
but, you see, Jack Knox is playing for Harvard this 
year." 

Then I remembered. Jack Knox had been the 
star player of the local team of two seasons past. 
He had gone to Harvard for graduate study, and 
would now, so far as a year's residence was con- 
cerned, be eligible for the Harvard team. I began 
to question my seatmate. How did he know that 
Jack Knox would play that day on the Harvard 
team? He did not know, it came out; and he had 
not stopped to think that perhaps Knox would not 
try for the Harvard team, or that he might not 
make it if he did. "Jack Knox could make any team 
in the world, sir. Sure, you know that. Remember 
that slide-off-tackle play of his? Remember that 
time he made the touchdown with two tacklers hang- 



THE AGE OF HERO WORSHIP 43 

ing to him for the last ten yards? Remember . . ." 
and on he went, till he had given me a pretty com- 
plete history of the athletic career of Jack Knox, 
and what seemed like an exhaustive catalogue of his 
virtues. 

I had uncovered a bit of hero worship. Jack 
Knox was to me a good football player, a clean-cut 
wholesome fellow, and a student of fair ability; but 
to this youngster he was a hero. I kept quietly in 
touch with the boy that fall. Week after week the 
Harvard scores appeared in the paper, but never 
Jack Knox 1 s name as a member of the team. Yet his 
faith in his hero was never shaken; and one day he 
met me triumphantly. "Say, did you know why Jack 
Knox is not playing for Harvard this year? I got 
one of the college boys to write and ask him; and 
he says that they don't allow graduate students to 
play. Huh — I should think "they wouldn't! The 
graduate students would be too good for the rest of 
them, I guess — at least, Jack Knox would be." The 
boy's interest in Harvard was over; but I fancied, 
four years later, when I watched him, now a fresh- 
man, begin his own battle for a place on the college 
team, that I could detect some of Jack Knox's old- 
time form. 

We are all hero worshipers — or ought to be. Car- 
lyle was right; that age is decadent that has no he- 
roes. Yet there is generally something of reserve 
about the hero worship of us grown-ups. We do not 
quite let ourselves go. We are too sensible of the 
complexity of situations, motives and characters. 
Our worship is sophisticated. We analyze our he- 



44 TALKS TO SUNDAY SCHOOL TEACHERS 

roes. We prize their qualities; we reverence their 
ideals; we distinguish between the men themselves 
and their causes, and our loyalty is to the cause 
rather than to the man. We are even ready to 
admit that in some respects they had or have faults. 

The hero worship of later childhood and early 
adolescence, however, is unreserved and wholeheart- 
ed. The boy is unskilled in psychological analysis. 
He knows little of motives or causes. He yields 
complete devotion to the man who can do something 
better than anybody else. Achievement catches his 
eye, challenges his admiration, creates his heroes. 
His ideal is the man who can. 

Some interesting studies of children's ideals have 
been made, usually by asking school children to write 
compositions on such subjects as, "What person 
would you most like to resemble, and why?" or, 
"What do you want to be when you grow up, and 
why?" As a whole, these studies exhibit certain 
general trends. 

(i) Younger children derive their ideals from 
their immediate acquaintances ; but as they get older, 
they tend increasingly to derive them from the great 
characters of history and the leaders of contempo- 
rary life. In Miss Darrah's study, 1 47 per cent of 
the seven-year-old children are reported as finding 
their ideals in father or mother, neighbor or friend 
39 per cent in literature, and 14 per cent in history 
But there is a steady change of relation with increas 
ing age, till at sixteen years, 80 per cent of the chil 
dren's ideals are historical, 12 per cent from litera 

1 Popular Science Monthly, Vol. 53, pages 88, 89 (May, 1898). 



THE AGE OF HERO WORSHIP 45 

ture, and only 8 per cent acquaintances. Historical 
characters, in this study, include contemporary mak- 
ers of history; and it is significant that an increasing 
number of these are chosen as the children get older. 
Chambers, in another study, 1 separated past from 
contemporary characters. His figures are : acquain- 
tance ideals diminish from 78 per cent at six years to 
5 per cent at sixteen; ideals from past history in- 
crease from 7 per cent at six years to 61 per cent at 
eleven, then gradually drop to 48 per cent at sixteen; 
ideals from contemporary history increase steadily 
from 9 per cent at six years to 19 per cent at eleven, 
then more rapidly to 39 per cent at sixteen. 

(2) Girls, as well as boys, tend to choose male 
ideals. Very few boys choose women as their 
ideals, and these mostly the younger boys ; but Miss 
Darrah found that 45 per cent of the seven-year-old 
girls whom she studied chose male ideals, and that 
this proportion increased until at fourteen and fifteen 
years, 67 per cent chose a man as their ideal. 

(3) As reasons for the choice of an ideal, in- 
creasing emphasis is put upon the active and virile 
virtues. Miss Darrah found that honesty, bravery, 
patriotism, leadership and intellectual ability are 
more esteemed as the children get older; that plain 
"goodness" is named by about the same proportion 
at every age; and that wealth, marvelous powers, 
and "He was good to me," motives which loom large 
in the answers of the younger children, tend to dis- 
appear among the older. 

These studies encourage us in the belief that moral 

1 Pedagogical Seminary, Vol. 10, pages 101-143 (March, 1903). 



46 TALKS TO SUNDAY SCHOOL TEACHERS 

ideals can be effectively presented to children through 
history and literature, story and biography. Not 
that these can be a substitute for their more con- 
crete presentation in life itself. Example, per- 
sonal influence, the suggestion of social environment, 
are of primary importance; yet, even when due al- 
lowance is made for the fact that these compositions 
were written in the atmosphere of the schoolroom 
and for the eye of the teacher, one gets from them 
an impression of the great moral value of biography 
and history. One sees, too, the wisdom of the pres- 
ent practice of our best schools in helping the chil- 
dren to study current events and to understand con- 
temporary issues. 

It is a mistake to think of the boy's hero worship 
as limited to the life of the "gang" or directed only 
toward its leader. True, he is most likely at this age 
to idealize physical strength or skill or daring, and 
to find his hero in football captain, star pitcher or 
successful hunter. But as fast as he comes to under- 
stand other types of achievement and to realize their 
worth, he is quite as ready to idealize and to wor- 
ship heroes of another sort. 

We shall not win him to new heroes by disparag- 
ing the old. If the old were clean, we want him to 
keep them and just to add the new. No man ought 
ever to lose his boyish admiration for physical skill 
or his respect for a good sportsman. Even if the old 
heroes were not desirable, it is the part of wisdom 
not to say too much about them, but to seek to re- 
place them by others more attractive, then to trust 
to "the expulsive power of a new affeetion." 



THE AGE OF HERO WORSHIP 47 

We shall not win the boy to new heroes by label- 
ing them as such. I am inclined to think that we 
use the word too much in dealing with children and 
youth whom we believe to be in the hero-worshiping 
age. Heroes are not made to order; nor do they 
come put up in packages. Instinctively, a boy is put 
upon the defensive when you come to him with a 
hero, duly labeled, approved and stamped. The 
more indirect method is better. Tell the story of 
achievement concretely, interestingly, with fire and 
life; do not be afraid to put all the feeling into it 
that naturally and honestly comes to the surface in 
yourself; but let the boy do his own thinking. When 
Jesus was asked, u Who is my neighbor?" he did not 
ask the lawyer to study out of a book entitled 
"Neighbors of the Kingdom" ; neither did he begin 
his story with, "Listen now, and I'll tell you about 
a good neighbor." He began, without prejudgment, 
to tell the story; and he ended it by asking the law- 
yer to draw his own conclusion. 

FOR INVESTIGATION AND DISCUSSION 

i. Differences between the hero-worship of childhood 
and youth, and that of adult life. 

2. Test the ideals of a group of children in the way 
suggested by the studies of Miss Darrah and Professor 
Chambers. 

3. Discuss and explain if you can, the changes in chil- 
dren's ideals shown by these studies. 

4. The effectiveness of moral education through the 
study of history, biography, literature and current events. 

5. Can you remember the hero-worship of your own 



48 TALKS TO SUNDAY SCHOOL TEACHERS 

childhood and youth ? Can you remember how the worship 
of some hero raised your ideals? Or how you were preju- 
diced from the start against a person who was too much 
labeled ? 

FOR FURTHER READING 

Besides the articles by Miss Darrah and Professor Cham- 
bers, cited in the text, read the admirable discussion of the 
whole problem in F. C. Sharp: "Education for Character," 
especially Part III. 



CHAPTER VI 
WHEN A BOY WANTS TO GO TO WORK 

WHEN does a boy want to go to work? It de- 
pends on the boy, of course; but we shall 
not be far wrong if we answer, When he is fourteen. 
External circumstances, as well as his own inward 
condition, make it easy and natural for him about 
that time to decide to quit school and to begin earn- 
ing money. 

At fourteen, a boy is usually no longer compelled 
by law to attend school, and the child labor laws no 
longer prohibit his employment, except in danger- 
ous occupations. If he entered school at six, more- 
over, and has advanced normally, he is at fourteen 
completing the work of the elementary school, and 
faces the question whether or not to enter high 
school. In all too many cases he is likely to find 
his parents somewhat indifferent to the advantages 
of further schooling, and they may even manifest a 
more or less definite expectation that he will now 
assume a share of the family's support. 

Inwardly, the boy feels himself to be coming into 
manhood. His sex powers are maturing. He is 
growing rapidly. He is putting away the things of 
childhood and is awakening to the grown-up world 
and reaching out toward its values. Yet he is not 

49 



50 TALKS TO SUNDAY SCHOOL TEACHERS 

quite sure of himself. Physically, he is awkward — 
"growing too fast/' we say; mentally, he is full of 
yeasty aspirations and uncoordinated desires. He 
wants to assert himself; but just what the self is that 
he would assert, he has not yet been able to deter- 
mine. 

Studies of school attendance in the cities of the 
United States show, in general, that children are 
most likely to drop out of school between the ages 
of thirteen and sixteen. The greatest losses in enrol- 
ment are in the seventh and eighth grades and in the 
first two years of the high school. Ayres concluded, 
from an investigation undertaken by the Russell Sage 
Foundation in 1908-9, that the general tendency of 
city school systems in the United States is to carry 
all the children through the fifth grade, half of them 
to the final elementary grade, and one in ten to the 
final year of the high school. A better situation was 
revealed by the Cleveland Survey of 1915. In 1913, 
Ohio had passed a new compulsory education law, 
requiring boys to attend school until they are fifteen 
years of age and girls until they are sixteen. The 
survey of the Cleveland schools showed that prac- 
tically all the children of that city remain in school 
until the age of twelve ; at the age of fourteen, one- 
sixth have dropped out; at fifteen, nearly half have 
gone; at sixteen, two-thirds; and at seventeen, only 
twenty-one per cent remain. Stated in terms of the 
grades, it appeared that almost all the children com^ 
plete the fifth grade, but one-fifth drop out by the 
time the seventh grade is reached, and over one-third 
quit before the eighth grade. Forty-one per cent of 



WHEN A BOY GOES TO WORK 51 

all enter the high school, however, and nearly half 
of these finish the course — a showing far more cred- 
itable than in many cities. 

In 19 10, the United States Bureau of Labor pub- 
lished a study of the conditions under which chil- 
dren leave school to go to work. For special in- 
quiry, 620 children were chosen, in seven represen- 
tative localities. Of these, only thirty per cent were 
compelled to leave school because their earnings 
were necessarily to family support or their actual 
help was needed. Twenty-eight per cent quit school 
because their help or earnings were desired, though 
not necessary; and twenty-seven per cent because, for 
one reason or another, they were dissatisfied with 
school. Only ten per cent gave as reason their de- 
sire to go to work, or their preference of work to 
school. 

This study is significant. We may yet further 
simplify its classification. There are three funda- 
mental types of reason for a boy's leaving school: 
because he really wants to go to work, because he 
does not want to go to school, or because his par- 
ents want him to go to work. Of these reasons, 
the first alone is responsible for comparatively few 
cases. True, the boy is bound to feel budding vo- 
cational ambitions in the early teens and to want 
money of his own; but these inward stirrings are not 
in most cases enough to cause him to take the step 
unless they be reenforced by the external situation. 
If, however, he finds that his parents do not care 
much whether or not he goes further in school, or 
that they expect him to get to work or actually need 



52 TALKS TO SUNDAY SCHOOL TEACHERS 

his earnings, the decision is likely to be made quickly. 
Or if there is something wrong with the school or 
with his adjustment to it — teachers incompetent or 
uninspiring, studies not practical enough, a school 
spirit lacking, or the boy himself not promoted — 
he is ready to quit if he gets a chance. 

Retardation in school is undoubtedly one of the 
chief reasons why pupils drop out. The boy who 
fails to be promoted and gets behind grade becomes 
discouraged and feels humiliated to be grouped with 
younger children ; and he is glad, as soon as the law 
permits him, to get into work where he can asso- 
ciate with others of his own age and receive weekly 
evidence of at least some measure of success in the 
form of a pay envelope. 

The situation in this respect is more serious than 
we are likely to think. At the close of the school 
year 19 12-13, tne Russell Sage Foundation made a 
census of the thirteen-year-old boys in seventy-eight 
cities of the United States, — the boys, that is, who 
were approaching the end of the compulsory attend- 
ance period. It brought out the fact that there were 
some thirteen-year-old boys in every school grade 
from the kindergarten to the senior year of the high 
school. Over twenty-two thousand boys of this age 
were listed. Five per cent of these were still in the 
third grade or lower, thirty-two per cent in the fifth 
grade or lower, and fifty-seven per cent in the sixth 
grade or lower. One wishes that these retarded 
boys had been looked up again a year later, to dis- 
cover how many of them had kept on at school, when 
no longer compelled by law to attend. 



WHEN A BOY GOES TO WORK 53 

The worst of it is that the boy of fourteen who 
goes to work is likely to get the wrong kind of job. 
This is partly because of the hit-or-miss way in which 
most boys of this age get placed in jobs; but it is 
chiefly because most of the jobs open to them are of 
the "blind alley" type. These jobs lead nowhere. 
They do not develop skill or resource, they will never 
pay much more than the initial wage; and in the 
course of a few years the boy will find himself too 
old for that type of work, but without qualifications 
for a good job. He will become a "job hobo" or an 
unskilled laborer, one from time to time of the army 
of the unemployed. 

Of 560 jobs held by boys and girls between four- 
teen and seventeen years of age, investigated by the 
University of Chicago Settlement, only thirty-five 
were of the sort that would lead to promotion or 
promised skill in some recognized trade. The Royal 
Commission on the Poor-Laws and Relief of Dis- 
tress, in its report published in 1909, expresses the 
conviction that this aspect of boy labor in England 
is perhaps the most serious of the bodies of fact 
which they encountered in their exhaustive study of 
unemployment. "The mass of unemployment is 
continually being recruited by a stream of young men 
from industries which rely upon unskilled boy labor, 
and turn it adrift at manhood without any general 
or special industrial qualification. ... It will never 
be diminished till this stream is arrested." 

What are we going to do about it? No one yet 
knows the full answer to that question. Our realiza- 
tion of the problem is too recent; our efforts to solve 



54 TALKS TO SUNDAY SCHOOL TEACHERS 

it are still in the stage of experiment. But it seems 
clear that the solution lies along four main lines 
of effort: 

( i ) More efficient schools can greatly lessen the 
amount of retardation. The worst of the systems 
studied had but twelve per cent of its thirteen-year- 
old boys where they ought to be, in the seventh 
grade or higher; the best had seventy-seven per cent 
there. 

(2) Vocational education can be provided for 
boys and girls between fourteen and sixteen. They 
are not profitable workers; they ought still to be 
learners. But they can be learning trades and fitting 
themselves to work with some degree of intelligence 
and skill. The old apprenticeship system has prac- 
tically passed; the state must provide a system of 
vocational education in its place. 

(3) Vocational guidance can help the boy to 
choose his occupation wisely, in view both of his own 
abilities and of conditions and opportunities within 
the occupation. Systems of vocational guidance that 
are especially worthy of study are those of Birming- 
ham, England; Edinburgh, Scotland; and Boston, 
Mass. 

(4) Follow-up protection can be given to the 
young workers for the first two or three years of 
their employment. The public school should not 
cease to be interested in its pupils when the first 
work-certificate is granted. It could aid them great- 
ly by a system of registration and follow-up service 
which would not leave them at the mercy of chance 



WHEN A BOY GOES TO WORK 55 

employers, "Help Wanted" advertisements, or com- 
mercial labor bureaus. 



FOR INVESTIGATION AND DISCUSSION 

1. Find out the facts concerning the elimination of 
children from school in your own community. 

2. Among the cases that you know of children leaving 
school before the end of the high school course, what were 
the causes of their decision? 

3. What are the facts regarding the retardation of pu- 
pils in the schools of your community? How are your 
schools seeking to solve the problem of retardation? 

4. How is your community handling the problems oc- 
casioned by the employment of young people in the 'teens? 
Does your community have an adequate system of vocational 
education? Of vocational guidance? 

5. What is the possible function of the church with 
respect to the vocational guidance of young people? 

FOR FURTHER READING 

Meyer Bloomfield : "Youth, School and Vocation," and 
the collection of papers made by the same author under 
the title : "Readings in Vocational Guidance." J. B. Davis : 
"Vocational and Moral Guidance" is suggestive. The facts 
concerning retardation are to be found in L. P. Ayres: 
"Laggards in Our Schools." The general volume by Ayres 
entitled "The Cleveland School Survey" summarizes the 
results of this significant educational survey; and more de- 
tailed information is found in the special volumes of the 
same series entitled "Wage Earning and Education" and 
"Child Accounting in the Public Schools." 



CHAPTER VII 
THE BREAKING OF OLD TIES 

ALL right, I'll go. I didn't know the college 
really meant it." The speaker was a student 
who had been summoned before the dean for per- 
sistent failure to abide by the college rule requiring 
attendance at church on Sunday morning. The cus- 
tomary notices and warnings had not moved him; 
even a previous friendly talk with the dean had done 
no good. But now he acquiesced, gracefully enough, 
in the ultimatum that henceforth one unexcused ab- 
sence from church would sever his relations with 
the college, and that excuses would be granted to him 
only in advance of a proposed absence. 

He started for the door, then turned with a frank 
smile. "Do you know, dean, it will be hard for the 
folks at home to believe that I have gotten into trou- 
ble like this down here. It may sound funny to you, 
but at home I go to church every Sunday, morn- 
ing and evening, and I teach a Sunday-school class." 
"That doesn't sound funny, but good," answered the 
dean. "But why then should you find it so hard to 
go to church here?" "Oh, it won't be hard. I guess 
the whole trouble is that I just didn't get started go- 
ing regularly here." 

He had diagnosed his case correctly. He was a 

56 



THE BREAKING OF OLD TIES 5*7 

clean, wholesome, upright boy, neither irreligious 
nor a rebel against authority. The plain fact was 
that he simply had not gotten started going to church 
in the college town. He was drifting. One of his 
established habits of life had been interrupted by 
leaving home and he had not set up a like habit in 
its place. An old tie broken, he had formed no new 
one. He was not unlike some older folk whose 
church-going habit does not survive moving from 
town to town or even from one neighborhood to an- 
other in the same city. 

The late teens and early twenties might be termed 
life's moving time. A great army of young people 
leave home every year, some to attend school or col- 
lege, more to go to work. They pass out from the 
familiar environment of childhood into new and 
strange surroundings. They are no longer encom- 
passed by parental authority. They must choose for 
themselves what to do and what to enjoy. Will they 
transfer to the new situation the habits, principles 
and ideals that they had gained in the old? Will 
they find new ties of moral relation to replace the 
old ties that circumstance has sundered? Or will the 
next few be years of wandering, even into a "far 
country" ? Will there be waste and wild oats before 
the youth comes to himself? Will he pay the price 
of bitter experience to learn again the old truths that 
parents had tried to teach him in childhood? 

The break is sharpest, and the danger greatest, in 
the case of the youth who goes to the city, to make 
his living among strangers. He faces a host of new 
temptations. He need not turn aside to seek them; 



58 TALKS TO SUNDAY SCHOOL TEACHERS 

they offer themselves to him, pushed forward by the 
ever-present commercial exploiters of the people's 
play. Low theaters and picture shows that lie about 
life, saloons, cabarets and social clubs, public dance 
halls, billiard and pool rooms, bowling alleys, amuse- 
ment parks, "white cities," excursion steamers, hotels 
without scruple and brothels unashamed, offer them- 
selves without stint to any one who has the price. 

Many an honest youth, seeking clean amusement, 
finds himself in the presence of what he would never 
have chosen had he known. It is what the public 
want, the promoters say; people like something with 
a little spice. All too soon, the youth may like his 
fun spiced too ; he comes to feel that this is life. He 
is sophisticated. He knows the world. "You see, 
father and mother are awfully innocent. They 
don't know anything about the world as I have seen 
it," was the almost patronizing reason of a repentant 
youth for urging that his sin be kept from the knowl- 
edge of his parents. 

The college student faces these same temptations, 
of course, especially if his college be in a large city. 
But he is in a measure protected. Some colleges are 
more, some less, paternal in their theory and prac- 
tice, but all seek definitely to guide and foster the 
moral as well as the intellectual growth of their stu- 
dents. New knowledge and new interests, moreover, 
save the student from emptiness of mind and from 
the evil which so easily besets a soul unoccupied and 
idle. He makes friends, too. Sometimes they are 
of the wrong sort, but the dominant trend of col- 
lege friendships, and of their more formal and re- 



THE BREAKING OF OLD TIES 59 

sponsible organization into fraternities, is whole- 
some. Athletic life, with its systematic exercise, its 
regular habits, its cleanliness and its ideals of team- 
play and good sportsmanship, is a mighty power for 
good — in a college that chooses so to conduct it. In 
short, the youth who leaves home to go to college 
finds there friendship, guidance and inspiration. 

The youth who goes to the city to work, however, 
too often fails to find these. There is no place on 
earth quite so lonely as a strange city, especially if 
one is looking for a job. Every one else seems to 
belong there ; every one else has business and friends ; 
but I, — you feel — I am an outsider. You envy even 
the newsboy who sells you the evening paper, for his 
easy nonchalance, his air of being at home and 
among familiars. Even after the job has been se- 
cured, and what looks like the path to success has 
been entered upon, it is friends that you most need 
and most lack. Your fellow workers scatter to the 
four winds when the whistle blows to quit; and your 
most obvious bond of sympathy with others of the 
motley group at the boarding-house table is a com- 
mon impecunity. 

To be in the presence of new and strange tempta- 
tions and without real friends is a precarious situa- 
tion. "Guess I'll just see what it is like," wavers the 
will. "Nobody knows me," is an easy justification 
for things that one would never do under observa- 
tion of those for whose good opinion he cares. 

What can we do to help the youth in this transi- 
tion time? First of all, we can prepare him for it. 
That means not simply that we shall use every re- 



60 TALKS TO SUNDAY SCHOOL TEACHERS 

source of home and school and church to train him 
in right habits, to equip him with true ideas and to 
inspire him with high ideals. It means as well that 
from his earliest childhood we shall do all that we 
can to develop self-reliance within him. We shall 
educate him for initiative and responsibility. 

Many well-meaning parents have failed here. 
They have maintained strict discipline and tempered 
it with love, but they have never left to the child an 
area, however small, within which he might decide 
and do things for himself. So he has been kept a 
child until he leaves home for college or work, and 
he is not prepared for freedom. The truer way is 
to lead the growing child into ever greater ranges 
of responsible choice; that the passage from home 
to the world beyond, from economic dependence to 
self-support and independence, may involve no leap 
or sudden break, but constitute rather a further step 
in a development long since begun. To take an ob- 
vious example, it is futile to expect a youth to know 
the worth of money and how to handle it, if he has 
never had a regular allowance of his own, with free- 
dom in spending it, yet with intelligent guidance and 
with responsibility for meeting out of it a definite 
range of his own needs. 

We can do much, again, to better the conditions 
which the youth is to face when he goes to the city. 
Its temptations are not ineradicable, however en- 
trenched in privilege. Working conditions need not 
be unfair, or wholesome amusement lacking. The 
whole program of civic and social betterment has 
direct bearing here. It is for the sake of our chil- 



THE BREAKING OF OLD TIES 61 

dren. National prohibition of the liquor traffic may 
not cure old soaks or habitual tipplers, but the youth 
of to-morrow will not have that devil to fight. 

Finally, we can make friends with the youth and 
open to him a desirable social life. We can offer 
him new ties for those that had to be broken. The 
Friendly Church, reads a great electric sign in one 
of our cities. Every church ought to be that, wheth- 
er it must say so or not. If we fill the youth's life 
with good things, — wholesome recreations, happy as- 
sociations, interests worth while — we need have little 
fear that he will yield to the worse ; if we do not, 
where shall he go ? 



FOR INVESTIGATION AND DISCUSSION 

1. Cite examples from your own experience of a break- 
ing of old ties which resulted in the formation of bad habits 
or in the loss of good ones? 

2. Why is the temptation greater for a boy working 
in a strange city than for a boy at college? 

3. The problems raised by the commercialization of 
amusements. 

4. Methods of developing self-reliance throughout grow- 
ing childhood and youth. 

5. In what ways can the church help to give to young 
people needed recreation and a desirable social life? 

FOR FURTHER READING 

Jane Addams: "The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets" 
and "A New Conscience and an Ancient Evil" ; Louise de 
K. Bowen: "Safeguards for City Youth at Work and at 



62 TALKS TO SUNDAY SCHOOL TEACHERS 

Play." The problem of educating children for self-reliance 
is admirably treated by Mrs. Dorothy Canfield Fisher 
in "Mothers and Children" and "Self-Reliance." The re- 
lation of the church to the social life of young people is dealt 
with in H. A. Atkinson: "The Church and the People's 
Play" and H. W. Gates: "Recreation and the Church." 



CHAPTER VIII 
WHEN DOUBTS COME 

IN his ballad of "Tomlinson," Rudyard Kipling 
has pictured unforgettably the correct conven- 
tional weakling, whose virtues and vices alike are 
but the reflection of those about him. Tomlinson 
lived in Berkeley Square, and, as is the custom of 
men, died and presented himself at heaven's gate. 
In answer to Peter's challenge, he spoke of his good 
in life : 



" 'O this I have read in a book,' he said, 'and that was told 

to me, 
And this I have thought that another man thought of a 

prince in Muscovy.' 
The good souls flocked like homing doves and bade him 

clear the path, 
And Peter twirled the jangling keys in weariness and 

wrath. 
'Ye have read, ye have heard, ye have thought,' he said, 

'and the tale is yet to run: 
By the worth of the body that once ye had, give answer — 

what ha' ye done?' 

" 'O this I have felt, and this I have guessed, and this I 
have heard men say, 
And this they wrote that another man wrote of a carl 

in Norroway!' 
'Ye have read, ye have felt, ye have guessed, good lack! 

Ye have hampered heaven's gate; 
There's little room between the stars in idleness to prate! 

63 



64 TALKS TO SUNDAY SCHOOL TEACHERS 

O none may reach by hired speech of neighbor, priest, and 

kin 
Through borrowed deed to God's good meed that lies so 

fair within ; 
Get hence, get hence to the Lord of Wrong, for doom has 

yet to run, 
And ... the faith that ye share with Berkeley Square 

uphold you, Tomlinson !' " 

But when Tomlinson seeks admission at the mouth 
of hell, the devil rejects him too, for the imps who 
sift his worth report that "he has no soul of his 
own." 

We all begin life upon a borrowed basis. Our 
moral and religious ideas are at first matters of hear- 
say. As children, we believe in God and in right 
because father and mother, teacher or friend, have 
told us so. But we do not remain children all our 
days. At some time or other, it is one's privilege 
and duty to pass from dependence to independence 
and self-reliance, from childhood to manhood, from 
beliefs borrowed at hearsay to convictions that are 
grounded in personal insight and choice. 

Most of us make this change in the late teens or 
early twenties. It is not wrought in a night. We 
pass more or less gradually from the borrowed to 
the personal basis. Individuals differ greatly, how- 
ever. Some make the transition early, others later; 
some rapidly, others more slowly; some with even 
pace in all-round harmonious development, others 
oddly lagging in some aspects of character or belief 
while precocious in other respects. 

In some the transition involves no doubts. Ex- 
perience confirms for them the precepts of childhood, 



WHEN DOUBTS COME 65 

and establishes the truth of their fathers' faith., 
Their new insights compel no contradiction of old 
principles, no break with early teaching. Their in- 
tellectual and moral development is continuous and 
straightforward. This happens more often, per- 
haps, than we think. The gaining of personal con- 
victions no more necessarily involves a wandering 
for a time in doubt than does the gaining of charac- 
ter involve a sojourn in the far country of sin. 
Doubting Castle is no more inevitable than the 
Slough of Despond. 

Yet to doubt is easy and natural at this time of 
life. Doubt comes because of youth's very vitality 
and earnestness, coupled with its intellectual self- 
confidence. Reason and will are maturing, and the 
young man is facing real and practical problems as 
he begins life for himself. He is eager to be doing, 
impatient with doddering ways, idealistic, sure of 
himself and sure of reason. No problem but has its 
one, and one only solution, he believes; and I need 
but think the thing through to find it. There is no 
issue upon which men cannot come to agreement, he 
holds, if they will only be reasonable enough. He is, 
in short, credulous of reason. His world must be 
logical; if not, so much the worse for the world. He 
has not yet been baffled by unreason as older men 
have been ; he has not sensed, as they have, the com- 
plexity of most of life's motives and situations. His 
thinking and speech are full of disjunctions; his fa- 
vorite argument is the dilemma. Things are either 
this or that for him ; he is not likely to realize that 



66 TALKS TO SUNDAY SCHOOL TEACHERS 

they may be a little of both this and that with an ad- 
mixture of several elses as well. 

Little wonder, therefore, that the young man of 
the early twenties is a creed-maker of definitely prag- 
matic temper, and inclined to question many of the 
old dogmas. He is but bringing to religion the same 
confident powers of mind with which he approaches 
everything else. 

His mind is filled, moreover, with new ideas. At 
no time of life, perhaps, does so much new knowl- 
edge pour in upon one as in these years of high 
school, college, and first vocational experience. Wil- 
liam James once said that most men gain practically 
all the ideas they will ever have, outside of their own 
business, before they are twenty-five. Yes, and they 
gain most of these after they are eighteen. From 
eighteen to twenty-five is life's intellectual expansion- 
time. 

The youth's religion should expand with the rest 
of his mental outfit. But often this does not take 
place at once. The new ideas gained in other fields 
operate to the discredit of his older religious con- 
ceptions, but do not replace them with others more 
adequate. In the name of geology he questions 
Genesis, and in the name of biology is moved to 
deny, not simply the doctrine of special creation, but 
the whole idea of divine purpose and providence. 
Physics starts him upon a mechanical conception of 
the universe, and introduces him to the ether which 
Haeckel thought would make a better god than the 
One whom Christians worship. He studies a psy- 
chology which has long since lost the soul, and which 



WHEN DOUBTS COME 67 

is in danger, in these latter days, of forgetting that 
there is such a thing as mind. Philosophy, to which 
he turns for help on ultimate problems, only mixes 
him up. He gets an inkling of modern views of the 
Bible, and decides that nobody can know what parts 
of it to believe. 

Difficulties of this sort are not limited to students 
in high school and college. The youth who left 
school to go to work gets new ideas too — from the 
popular science of the magazines and Sunday supple- 
ments, from the "uplift" editorials in yellow news- 
papers, from soap-box orators and labor agitators; 
and the result is likely to be more disastrous be- 
cause the ideas are poorer on the one hand and his 
mind less trained on the other. 

Even that student who has rightly grasped the 
sciences, has understood his philosophy courses, and 
has been led by them and by his study of Biblical lit- 
erature to adequate and true religious conceptions, — 
the student whose religious ideas are keeping pace 
with the rest of his moral and intellectual develop- 
ment, — is likely to doubt the teaching of his elders. 
His new ideas will not own the old. His mind dwells 
upon the difference between what he now believes 
and what was taught him in childhood. In many 
cases, of course, this difference is real; he was 
wrongly taught, for not all parents and teachers 
know the truth or how to teach it to children. But 
even if he was rightly taught, he was able to get but 
a child's understanding of the matter. And it is this 
child's understanding of it that he now doubts. The 
difference that he feels so keenly is probably not, as 



68 TALKS TO SUNDAY SCHOOL TEACHERS 

he thinks it is, a difference between the old and the 
new generations; it is rather the difference between 
the child that was and the man that has come to be. 
His doubt is the measure, not of the world's advance, 
but of his own development. 

How shall we deal with the doubts of later adoles- 
cence? First, by recognizing their naturalness. 
Doubt in these years is no sin; neither is it evidence 
of some moral perversity. It is incidental to the 
transition from borrowed beliefs to personal convic- 
tions. 

Second, by knowing enough to meet and answer 
them, and to guide young people to the truth they 
seek. Natural as it is, doubt is no mere disease which 
everybody is sure to have some time and which one 
cannot do much for except to wait until the patient 
gets over it, — somewhat as people used to regard 
mumps and measles. Neither is it to be repressed 
and stifled. Better far to give it opportunity to real- 
ize and express itself, then meet it with knowledge — 
open-minded, reasonable, adequate, true. That 
above all else is what the doubting youth wants and 
needs — not so much sympathy or authority, or even 
leadership, as knowledge. 

Third, by ourselves realizing and helping young 
people to understand the place that the will has in 
determining our most fundamental convictions. 
These are seldom matters of coercive knowledge; 
they are the fruit of action and of faith as well as 
of intellect. Every teacher of young people in the 
doubting years should be familiar with William 
James' great essay on "The Will to Believe." 



WHEN DOUBTS COME 69 

Fourth, by remembering and helping young peo- 
ple to see that eccentricity is in itself no virtue. In- 
dividuality is precious, and personal convictions are 
worth the travail they cost. But individuality can be 
fully realized only in social relation; and one may 
base upon grounds that are personal, convictions that 
are the common heritage of the race. Youth, not 
fully understanding this, is sometimes tempted to 
mistake individualistic self-will for individuality, ec- 
centricity for independence. Edward Rowland Sill 
put the truth of the matter in verses that should be 
better known : 



"Doubting Thomas and loving John 
Behind the others walking on: — 

" 'Tell me now, John, dare you be 
One of the minority? 
To be lonely in your thought, 
Never visited or sought, 
Shunned with secret shrug, to go 
Through the world esteemed its foe: 
To be singled out and hissed, 
Pointed at as one unblessed, 
Warned against in whispers faint 
Lest the children catch a taint : 
To bear off your titles well — 
Heretic and infidel? 
If you dare, come now with me, 
Fearless, confident, and free.' 

" 'Thomas, do you dare to be 
Of the great majority? 
To be only, as the rest, 
With heaven's common comforts blessed: 
To accept, in humble part, 
Truth that shines in every heart: 
Never to be set on higfh 



70 TALKS TO SUNDAY SCHOOL TEACHERS 

Where the envious curses fly: 
Never name or fame to find, 
Still outstripped in soul and mind, 
To be hid, unless to God, 
As one grass-blade in the sod 
Underfoot with millions trod? 
If you dare, come with us, be 
Lost in love's great unity.' M 



FOR INVESTIGATION AND DISCUSSION 

1. Why is doubt easy and natural in the late teens and 
early twenties? Is it necessary or inevitable? 

2. Do you remember what particular doubts bothered 
you at this period, when you were making the transition 
from borrowed to personal convictions? 

3. What should be the attitude of older folk to the 
doubts of later adolescence? 

4. What do you mean by faith? Is faith a necessary 
factor in determining one's moral and religious convictions? 
Give reasons for your answer. 

5. What is the rightful meaning and place of authority 
in the moral and religious life? 

6. In how far does the individual have the right to 
believe as conscience dictates? Is it possible to base upon 
individual grounds convictions that are the common heritage 
of the race? 

FOR FURTHER READING 

R. S. Bourne: "Youth and Life" presents the standpoint 
of youth. G. A. Coe: "The Spiritual Life" gives an ac- 
count of the religious doubts of young people. William 
James* essay on "The Will to Believe" should be read by 
every teacher. Its point of view is applied specifically to 
Christian convictions in E. H. Rowland: "The Right to 



WHEN DOUBTS COME £8 

Believe." Books that young people will find most stimulat- 
ing and helpful are those by Harry E. Fosdick: "The 
Meaning of Faith," "The Meaning of Prayer," "The 
Manhood of the Master," and "The Assurance of Im- 
mortality." 



CHAPTER IX 
THE FORMING OF HABITS 

READERS of Joseph Lincoln's "Extricating 
Obadiah" will remember Captain Noah New- 
comb's dramatic entrance, humped over the steering 
wheel of a "tinny" runabout, his elbows well out and 
his hat jammed on the back of his head, his eyes 
glued upon the macadam directly in front of the 
radiator, but the car shooting from side to side of 
the road, its horn squawking continually, till it 
crashed through a rickety fence and fetched up hub- 
deep in a little pond. "I've hit most everywhere 
since I left Provincetown in this dratted thing," ob- 
served the captain, "but I ain't hit the middle of the 
road yet." 

Six months later Captain Newcomb and his car 
appeared again on Trumet's main street. "But now," 
reports the chronicler, "he did not crouch over the 
wheel, his hands bent in a petrified clutch at its 
circumference and his eyes glaring at the road just 
ahead. Indeed, no. The captain leaned back 
against the upholstery, and his clutch upon the wheel 
was light, but confident. He did not glare at the 
road; he smoked a cigar and looked easily about 
him. And in the wake left in the dust by the tires 
of that little car there was not to be discerned one 

72 



THE FORMING OF HABITS 73 

nervous jiggle. It was plain that Captain Noah 
had become, as he had sworn to become, 'boss of 
the ship/ " 

What made the difference? Practice, of course. 
That is the only way to become a skilled automobile 
driver. One may take lesson after lesson on how 
to handle a car and may thoroughly understand the 
principles involved; but he will not drive well until 
he has had a certain amount of experience and prac- 
tice upon the road. Some movements must be made 
matters of habit — the coordination of eye and hand 
involved in steering, the control of clutch and brake 
and accelerator, deftness in shifting gears and readi- 
ness to use the emergency brake. The beginner has 
to think of all these things and of how to do them ; 
the practiced driver does them as a matter of course. 
They have become second nature. He does them as 
naturally and as easily as he walks or talks or writes; 
and his mind concerns itself, not with the mechan- 
ical details of the action, but with its objective ends. 
Just as, after one has learned to write, he thinks no 
longer of how to form the letters, but of what he 
wants to say, the practiced driver, no longer com- 
pelled to think of just what to do to control his car 
and how to do it, is free to think of where he is go- 
ing and to take account of every obstacle or possible 
danger. 

This principle of practice is universal. It applies 
to the whole of life. We are naturally plastic. We 
are so built that every experience leaves its trace 
upon mind and body. An action done once is easier 
to do a second time ; done twice, is still easier to do 



74 TALKS TO SUNDAY SCHOOL TEACHERS 

a third time. Any two things that happen together 
or are in any way connected in our minds, tend in 
future to recall one another, Any order of events, 
once followed, suggests itself thereafter as a natural 
order, to be followed again. Any succession of 
ideas, once traversed in mind, is apt to repeat itself. 

These are examples of the working of the law of 
habit. It is the most universal and fundamental 
of all the laws of mental life. Without it we could 
never learn anything or acquire any skill. We should 
remain raw animals, creatures of mechanical instinct 
or random impulse. The baby that learns to recog- 
nize its mother's face and to prattle "ma-ma," does 
so because of this elemental tendency of things that 
have been put together in experience to stay put to- 
gether and to recall one another. The child that 
learns to write or figure or speak a piece, the girl 
who learns to sew or knit, the boy who learns to 
throw a baseball or to shoot, the woman who falls in 
love, the man who makes a decision upon which may 
hang the happiness of many people — all are able to 
do what they do because of this law. All that we 
ever come to be because of what we learn or acquire 
in the course of experience, as distinguished from 
what we are by inborn nature, we owe in part, and 
at bottom, to habit. It makes possible all growth 
and development in mind and character. 

Yet habit does not insure growth and develop- 
ment, or guarantee their right direction. It simply 
keeps conserving all that we think and do, storing 
it up and making it a part of ourselves, and render- 
ing it available for future use. If we are content 



THE FORMING OF HABITS 75 

day after day to do no more than repeat a given 
round, whether of drudgery or of idle indulgence, 
habit accustoms us to that lot and development prac- 
tically ceases. If we think and do wrong things, 
habit helps us to develop in that direction almost as 
readily as in the right direction. 

The truth is that we are practicing something all 
the time. The law of habit is always at work. It 
does not select only those thoughts and actions that 
we could wish it to conserve ; it takes account of all 
that we do or think or say. It is possible through 
carelessness to fall into bad habits, even though we 
want good ones. 

I am changing my game. I have played tennis 
all my life, but now am taking up golf. I have 
been acting in accordance with the principle of which 
we have been thinking. The way to learn golf, I 
have said to myself, is to play golf; here, as every- 
where, "practice makes perfect." But I have found 
that that is not the whole truth. The other day I 
met an old gentleman nearly twice my age who post- 
ed a score of 89, while mine was 113; and he gave 
me some advice. "Be sure," he said, "to take a few 
lessons from the professional. It will give you a 
right start, and good habits are just as hard to break 
as bad ones. Then every few months take a couple 
of lessons more, so that he may discover the bad 
habits into which you will fall from time to time, 
and help you to get rid of them." 

That is sound advice. Mere practice is not enough, 
if one is to form right habits in golf or in anything 
else. It should be intelligent practice, that begins 



[76 TALKS TO SUNDAY SCHOOL TEACHERS 

with clear ideas, gets a good start, and seeks correc- 
tion from time to time. Good habits so begotten are, 
indeed, "just as hard to break as bad ones." 

In his excellent book on "Habit Formation and the 
Science of Teaching" Principal Rowe formulates the 
following four steps in any lesson which aims at the 
development of a habit : ( i ) to help the pupil de- 
velop the idea of the habit — that is, to get him to 
know definitely and clearly just what he is to com- 
mit or acquire; (2) to work up his initiative or zest 
for the task, to give him a motive for acquiring that 
habit; (3) to secure abundant and genuine practice 
through attentive, painstaking repetition; (4) to 
guard against exceptions, lapses, and modifications. 

William James's classic chapter on "Habit" gives 
four practical rules of habit formation : ( 1 ) Launch 
yourself with as strong and decided an initiative as 
possible. Get a good, clear start, in other words; 
and "envelop your resolution with every aid you 
know." (2) Never suffer an exception to occur till 
the new habit is securely rooted in your life. "Each 
lapse," he says, "is like the letting fall of a ball of 
string which one is carefully winding up; a single 
slip undoes more than a great many turns will wind 
again." (3) Seize the very first opportunity to act 
on every resolution you make, and on every emotion- 
al prompting you may experience in the direction of 
the habits you aspire to gain. Otherwise, you are 
falling into the habit of failing to act. (4) Keep 
the faculty of effort alive in you by a little gratuitous 
exercise every day. Do things, that is, that you 
would rather not do, for the sake of maintaining 



THE FORMING OF HABITS 77 

habits of concentration, energetic volition, self-con- 
trol, and self-denial. 

Professor Bain, whom James followed in this mat- 
ter, long ago summed up the whole philosophy of 
habit formation in two conditions : "Adequate initi- 
ative and an unbroken persistence." 



FOR INVESTIGATION AND DISCUSSION 

1. Formulate the law of habit. 

2. Distinguish as aspects of the law of habit between 
what has been termed the law of exercise and the law of 
effect. Show the importance of each in the learning process. 

3. What do you understand by the association of ideas? 
Show how this is an application of the law of habit. 

4. What are the steps in acquiring a new habit or 
breaking an old one? 

5. The effect of lapses and exceptions. 

6. The effect of failure to act out good resolutions or 
high emotions. 

FOR FURTHER READING 

Read the discussions of habit in James' "Psychology," 
Colvin and Bagley's "Human Behavior," and in Thorn- 
dike's "Elements of Psychology," "Principles of Teaching," 
and "Education." For the pedagogical applications of the 
law of habit read S. H. Rowe: "Habit-Formation and the 
Science of Teaching" ; for its moral applications read John 
MacCunn: "The Making of Character" and E. E. R. 
Mumford: "The Dawn of Character." 



CHAPTER X 
THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE WILL 

A FAVORITE resort of my children is the little 
zoological garden of our city — East Rock 
Farm, they call it The other day we had an ex- 
citing experience there. A gorgeous blue peacock 
attacked our automobile while parked, and scratched 
it with his spurs, damaging himself a good deal, 
of course, in the process. 

"Pore ole Bill," the keeper observed. "I don't 
know what we kin do with 'im. He never will learn 
no sense. He just can't stand it to have another 
peacock around. And soon as he sees hisself in the 
sides of an automobile, he jumps at it. He's hurt 
hisself lots of times, but he never seems to learn 
nothing." 

Poor old Bill, indeed! I could not help thinking 
of him on the way home and pitying him. With all 
his beauty of tail, he has a very small head. And, 
in this matter at least, he is the creature of imperious 
instinct. He is so made that he cannot brook the 
presence of another of his kind without challenge to 
battle; and as soon as he sees the reflection of his 
own body in the polished sides of an automobile, the 
battle is on. He does not think. He makes no 
choice. He cannot control himself. Instinct pushes 

78 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE WILL 79 

him on. To see another peacock means fight for 
him, and he does not stop to inquire whether the 
opposing peacock be real or not. The keeper was 
right: "He never will learn no sense." 

We human animals are like Bill in that we have 
instincts; but we are unlike him — or should be — in 
that we can learn sense. Our instincts are modi- 
fiable by habit and experience. Each time that they 
are used, they become more definite and may become 
more intelligent. The idea of their result remains 
in memory and may guide future action. 

Here, then, is the beginning of will : when action 
is guided by the idea of a result. Many of our ac- 
tions are mere responses to present sense-stimuli, as 
dodging a blow, turning toward a sound, lifting the 
hat when we greet a woman friend, glancing over the 
evening paper, and the like. We do not consciously 
intend anything by such actions, as a rule; we do 
them because they are appropriate to the present 
circumstances. Other actions are determined by in- 
ward impulses, such as eating when hungry, drinking 
when thirsty, breaking into song when happy, and 
so on. Will begins when the action is determined 
by the idea of some result or consequence. We 
intend this result; and we perform the action in or- 
der to secure it. 

Yet the presence of an intention is not enough to 
constitute an action one of will. Here is a man 
who runs off to play golf, seemingly, every time that 
the idea of the game enters his head, to the neglect 
of otfrer things. Here is a woman whose tongue is 
constantly getting her into trouble, for she always 



80 TALKS TO SUNDAY SCHOOL TEACHERS 

"speaks out her mind." Both are sorry afterward; 
they say, "I didn't think." And that is the actual 
fact: they did not think enough. 

Their actions were idea-motived, we grant. The 
man played golf because he wanted to do it; the 
woman intended to say what she said. But the 
trouble was that neither stopped to think of anything 
else. There were no alternative ideas present, no 
other intentions brought to mind to offset these, no 
deliberation, no weighing of issues, no choice. They 
reacted almost as directly, immediately and un- 
thinkingly to the presence of an idea in their minds 
as Bill reacts to the sight of another peacock. 

Such actions, even though motived by an idea, are 
not properly acts of will. What above all else dis- 
tinguishes willed action from habitual or impulsive 
action, is the presence of alternative ideas and intel- 
ligent choice between them. 

It seems clear, as a matter of fact, that Nature 
intended us to be deliberative beings. We differ 
from Bill, and from all lower animals like him, not 
simply in that our instincts can be modified by experi- 
ence, but in that we possess a far larger number of 
instincts — so many, indeed, that they conflict with 
one another. Bill's is a simple life. His reper- 
toire of actions is pretty meager. Comparatively 
few of the aspects of the world count as circum- 
stances to him, and for each of these he is equipped 
with a definite response. Consequently, Bill makes 
such mistakes as he did in attacking the automobile. 
"The whole story of our dealings with the lower 
wild animals," says William James, "is the history 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE WILL 81 

of our taking advantage of the way in which they 
judge of everything by its mere label, as it were, 
so as to ensnare or kill them. Nature, in them, has 
left matters in this rough way, and made them act 
always in the manner which would be oftenest right. 
There are more worms unattached to hooks than im- 
paled upon them; therefore, on the whole, says Na- 
ture to her fishy children, bite at every worm and 
take your chances." 

But Nature is not so careless of her higher chil- 
dren. She wants them to be able to discriminate 
safety from danger, friend from enemy, right from 
wrong. And so she implants within the higher birds 
and mammals, and most of all within man, many 
rather than few instincts and impulses. We may 
respond to a given situation with sociability or shy- 
ness, curiosity or timidity, bashfulness or vanity, 
rivalry or cooperation, self-sacrifice or pugnacity, 
and so on. We are embarrassed, as the peacock is 
not, by the very number of impulses that well up 
within us and by the variety of possible actions which 
they suggest. And so we are driven to use our 
minds. Will arises, not because we have no in- 
stincts, but rather out of the fact that we have so 
many that they contradict and block one another. 
Just which is the right one to follow in any particu- 
lar situation, we must learn to decide for ourselves 
in the light of experience. We thus run the risk of 
error, and we do, as a matter of fact, make many 
mistakes. But they are our mistakes ; we make them 
ourselves. Nature does not make them for us, as she 
does in case of the fish and the peacock. 



82 TALKS TO SUNDAY SCHOOL TEACHERS 

When we deliberate we hold in imagination what 
Professor Dewey has called a dramatic rehearsal of 
various possible lines of action. "We give way, in 
our mind, to some impulse ; we try, in our mind, some 
plan. Following its career through various steps, we 
find ourselves in imagination in the presence of the 
consequences that would follow : and as we then like 
and approve, or dislike and disapprove, these conse- 
quences, we find the original impulse or plan good 
or bad." We do this with each suggested course of 
action in turn and weigh the respective consequences ; 
then make our decision in light of this mental try- 
ing them out. My wife and children are to spend 
the summer months in Minnesota. They must go 
alone, and I shall join them later. How shall I 
send them? By steamer over the Great Lakes from 
Buffalo to Duluth or by rail via Chicago? If the 
latter, shall they go from New York over the New 
York Central or the Pennsylvania? One after an- 
other, we summon to mind the various possibilities ; 
in imagination we traverse the several routes, recall- 
ing our experiences with each and prophesying as 
best we can what it is apt to be like this time. The 
steamer trip is one of the most pleasant in all Amer- 
ica ; but it is too long for a lone woman with the care 
of three children. Either the New York Central or 
the Pennsylvania will enable them to reach Minne- 
sota, with only one night on the sleeping-car; that 
is why we consider no other roads. But the Penn- 
sylvania tosses one more as it curves through the 
mountains, and there is the roar of freight trains 
passing at five-minute intervals all night. Still, the 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE WILL 83 

Pennsylvania has a union station at Chicago with the 
Milwaukee road, which is to carry them to their 
destination ; and if they take the New York Central 
they will be compelled to transfer there from one 
station to another. We shall choose the Pennsyl- 
vania. 

What factors enter into the development of an 
efficient will? The foregoing discussion justifies the 
answer: Every factor that enters into the develop- 
ment of the mind itself, for will is simply a name 
for mind in action. More specifically, the develop- 
ment of the will depends primarily upon ( i ) the 
widening of knowledge through experience, acquir- 
ing adequate and usable ideas and power to conceive 
alternatives and predict consequences; (2) practice 
in deliberation, developing right habits of thinking 
and sound methods of reasoning; (3) the develop- 
ment of such ideals and the cultivation of such feel- 
ings as shall lead one to prefer and to choose wisely 
among the consequences presented to the mind in de- 
liberation; (4) practice in prompt, energetic action 
in execution of one's decisions. 

In the development of the will much depends upon 
one's personal associations — which is the same thing 
as to say that much depends upon the other wills 
with which it deals. The direction of one's will is 
often determined for life by early training in the 
home; and to the end of one's days the quality of his 
will depends in part upon his family, friends and 
business associates, the demands that they make on 
him and the environment which they constitute for 
him. Ever since St. Paul, moreover, Christians have 



84. TALKS TO SUNDAY SCHOOL TEACHERS 

rightly believed that the ultimate secret of strength 
of will lies in one's personal association with God 
through Christ Jesus. 



FOR INVESTIGATION AND DISCUSSION 

i. Illustrate by further examples the difference between 
willed action and impulsive action. 

2. What is the relation of the multiplicity and indefinite- 
ness of human instincts to the development of the will? 

3. Follow your own trend of thought in deliberating 
upon some problem of action, and state the dramatic re- 
hearsal which goes on in your mind. 

4. What are the four factors which enter into the de- 
velopment of an efficient will? 

5. Think of some case of weakness of will and state 
to which of these factors you deem it attributable. 

6. Why is the cultivation of right feelings important 
to the development of the will? 

7. In what respects does the development of the will 
depend upon one's personal associations? 

FOR FURTHER READING 

The chapter on "Will" in James' "Psychology"; Mrs. 
E. E. R. Mumford's "The Dawn of Character"; and H. 
C. King's "Rational Living." Those who care to push 
further into a study of the intellectual conditions of effi- 
cient willing, will find guidance in John Dewey's "How 
We Think" and I. E. Miller's "The Psychology of Think- 
ing." 



CHAPTER XI 
THE ROOTS OF LAW 

THE word "law" has several meanings. We 
think first, perhaps, of civil law. Its basis is 
that of political authority. It is enacted by the rec- 
ognized law-makers of a political group, such as a 
community, state or nation; and it is enforced by 
the police power of that group. It expresses what 
must be, if one would escape the penalties which are 
established as part of the law itself. 

We think, again, of natural law. Its basis is that 
of fact. Such laws as the law of gravitation, the 
laws of thermo-dynamics, the laws of digestion, the 
law of habit, need not to be enacted. They simply 
are. God enacted them when he created the world. 
They express, not so much what must be, as what is. 
We cannot help but follow these laws. They are 
statements of what, under given circumstances, is 
sure to take place, because nature is built that way 
and is uniformly consistent. 

Moral law expresses what men ought to do and 
be. It is enforced by an inward sense of obligation 
rather than by an external "must" ; and it is unlike 
natural law in that we can refuse to follow it if we 
choose. It is concerned with ideals of living; it de- 
fines right and wrong. 

85 



86 TALKS TO SUNDAY SCHOOL TEACHERS 

Different as these kinds of law are, they are alike 
in one fundamental and most important respect: all 
tell us how to act, in one respect or another. A civil 
law, for example, forbids us to spit in public places 
under penalty of a fine; a natural law, once under- 
stood, bids us sleep with our bedroom windows open; 
a moral law tells us that it is right to speak the 
truth and wrong to lie. We live in a world of laws, 
and we learn how to live only as we learn how to 
obey and to use these laws. We derive from them 
what one might call personal laws or principles of 
action. 

We begin to do this very early. As soon as a 
child can form a purpose of his own and has some 
idea of what to do in order to fulfill that purpose, 
this is evidence that he has begun to understand some 
of the laws of the world about him. His recogni- 
tion of law is coincident with the development within 
him of intelligence and will. 

A child gets his ideas of how to act from four 
main sources, which constitute the great roots of law 
in his life. These are habit, imitation, authority and 
social initiative. 

i. Habit and the association of ideas. A child 
derives his principles of action, in the first place, 
from his own experiences and their results. "A 
burnt child dreads the fire/' runs the trite old prov- 
erb. He has learned a natural law, and derived 
from it a principle of action. 

The child is not always, or even often, conscious 
of the laws that he is making for himself. The prin- 
ciple of habit operates mechanically and unnoticed. 



THE ROOTS OF LAW 87 

But it operates inevitably. Experiences that result 
happily tend naturally to be repeated; those that are 
painful will in future be avoided. Lines of action 
that have been successful will be followed again; 
those that have met defeat or brought unhappiness 
will be tried no more. 

Sometimes, on the other hand, the process is not 
mechanical. More than mere habit, it involves an 
association of ideas. The child thinks about his ex- 
perience, and as a result of his thinking makes a rule 
for himself. 

I remember observing a two-year-old's first meet- 
ing with a dog. He went toward it without fear and 
with an evident desire to play, but scurried back 
crying, "Daddy, daddy, dogs bark. 'Care me." For 
several months he could not be induced to go near a 
dog. But one day the father introduced to him an 
especially quiet and good-humored dog with the re- 
mark that here was one who was friendly to little 
boys; and he greatly enjoyed petting it. "Friendly 
dogs are nice," he said. And ever since, he appeals 
to father or mother whenever he sees a dog. "Is 
that a friendly dog?" he queries. If the answer is 
Yes, he approaches the dog with all confidence; if 
No, he sticks close to parental protection. 

It is not far from the truth to say that a child is 
continually reworking his experience. On the basis 
of what happens under given circumstances, he is 
making and remaking, consciously or unconsciously, 
rules of action for himself. His understanding of 
the facts and laws of the world about him is of 
course incomplete and may be much mistaken; the 



88 TALKS TO SUNDAY SCHOOL TEACHERS 

little principles of action that he gains may fall far 
short of the truth. Yet his mind is at work and 
his will is acquiring strength and direction. 

2. Imitation and suggestion. A child derives prin- 
ciples of action, again, from what he observes of the 
behavior and experiences of others. There has been 
debate among psychologists in late years concern- 
ing the mechanism of imitation. Professor Thorn- 
dike, particularly, has denied the existence of any 
special instinct that leads either children or animals 
to do whatever they see others do. He has so well 
established his position as to throw the burden of 
proof upon those who believe that there is such an 
instinct. But the objective fact of imitation, in the 
large, remains, whatever may be its mechanism. 
Adults, as well as children, tend to act like those 
about them. 

The persons we meet and live with are the most 
live and real and interesting of experience's data. 
To adapt ourselves to them is one of the most imme- 
diate of life's problems, upon the solution of which 
our sense of well-being, our happiness or unhappi- 
ness, largely and directly depends. The presence of 
others is thus one of the most compelling of stimuli. 
People naturally attract our attention. Their experi- 
ences seem almost to be an extension of our own. 
Their behavior is among the most potent of sugges- 
tions. 

If this be true of adults, it is even more true of 
children, who are dependent upon older folk and just 
beginning to acquire knowledge 1 and self-control. 
Their little minds and bodies are exceedingly plastic. 






THE ROOTS OF LAW 89 

They seem almost to absorb the world about them. 
They reflect their social environment. What their 
elders do is far more potent in shaping their lives 
than what these same elders say. 

3. Authority. No wise parent or teacher will just 
let his children alone in the midst of natural forces 
and social experiences, to understand these as best 
they may. The risks are too great, and life too com- 
plex. It is his privilege to provide for and to pro- 
tect his children so that they may have opportunity 
to grow, and so to simplify and interpret their en- 
vironment that they may be helped to understand 
the great fundamental laws of nature and human 
life. He will therefore tell his children things that 
would cost too much were they to be left simply to 
the teaching of experience; he will command when 
commandment is needed ; and to misdeeds he will an- 
nex punishments — even spankings sometimes — in or- 
der that the children may be helped to discriminate 
right from wrong. 

As the child makes rules of action for himself, 
then, he must adapt himself not simply to the ways 
of nature and to the behavior of other persons, but 
to the laws of those who are set in authority over 
him. The important point is that the value of such 
adaptation to authority depends upon the character 
of the authority and its relation to the other roots of 
law. If the commands of the parents reflect the 
real laws of life, natural, moral and social; if they 
serve to exhibit and interpret those laws to the child 
upon the level of his needs and experiences; if the 
parents' own fife is subject to these same laws — in 



90 TALKS TO SUNDAY SCHOOL TEACHERS 

short, if the child finds the deliverances of authority 
to be consistently backed up by his own experiences 
and his observation of the experiences of others, so 
that habit and imitation lead him in the same direc- 
tion, — then authority is rightly used, and is of the 
highest value. An authority, on the other hand, that 
is arbitrary, out of relation to the real principles of 
justice and right or inconsistent with the parents' own 
life, introduces confusion into the child's experience 
and is likely to beget rebellion. We older folk who 
thank God now that we had fathers and mothers 
whose stern discipline made us obey are not really 
thankful so much for the spankings that we received 
as for the fact that the spankings were administered 
for right reasons and backed up by true instruction 
and a consistent life. 

4. Social initiative. A child's principles of action 
are not fully his own until they have passed from a 
merely adaptive to an initiative basis. The final mo- 
tive of morality is not that simply of adaptation to 
external conditions, natural or social; it is rather 
the desire to enter helpfully and creatively into the 
common life of men. One becomes law-abiding then, 
not because 'he must but because he wants to do his 
share and make his contribution to the good of the 
group. 

This motive, too, enters early into the life of a 
child. It manifests itself as soon as he can feel his 
helpfulness in a common task or play. Under the 
misleading of the recapitulation theory and its ana- 
logues we have been wont to underestimate its place 
in these early years. We have been told that child- 






THE ROOTS OF LAW 91 

hood is non-social, non-moral, non-religious. There 
could be no greater mistake. While it is true that 
moral training in childhood must lay the larger em- 
phasis relatively upon conditions external to the child 
himself, it is equally true that even very little chil- 
dren love to help and care for others. I have seen 
primary schoolrooms that were models of law-abid- 
ing discipline, not because of the teacher's external 
authority, but because of the inward initiative of a 
common devotion to some project in which all the 
children had a share. 

We do not need so much to make rules of life for 
our children as to give them a fair opportunity to 
make the right sort of rules for themselves. That 
means that we shall seek in every way to render ex- 
perience consistent with precept, and to make our 
measures of discipline express the real laws of life. 
Above all, we shall seek to cooperate in their little 
enterprises and to enlist their cooperation in ours, 
that the rules of life may come to be a joint product 
of our common experience, and that morality may 
be based for them upon grounds of inward initiative. 

FOR INVESTIGATION AND DISCUSSION 

1. Give examples of a child's making laws for himself 
as a result of habit and the association of ideas. 

2. Do children possess a general instinct to imitate? 
If possible, look up Thorndike's views on this point. If 
there is no such general instinct, how are the objective facts 
of imitation to be explained? 

3. The place of authority, precept and punishment in 
the moral development of children. 



92 TALKS TO SUNDAY SCHOOL TEACHERS 

4. The importance of consistency of life with precept. 
What do you think of the parent who sends his children 
to Sunday school, but himself has nothing to do with it or 
with the church? Give reasons for your answer. 

5. Social initiative in early and middle childhood, and 
the changes in this respect which take place in later child- 
hood and early adolescence. 

FOR FURTHER READING 

The best treatments of the psychology of moral develop- 
ment in childhood are in the book by Mrs. Mumford on 
"The Dawn of Character" and in Part III of G. A. Coe's 
"A Social Theory of Religious Education." Excellent books 
on moral education are J. MacCunn: "The Making of 
Character"; Sneath and Hodges: "Moral Training in the 
School and Home"; Patterson Dubois: "The Natural 
Way in Moral Training"; F. C. Sharp: "Education for 
Character." The last of these is an especially thorough 
study of the possibility of moral education in the public 
schools, which every teacher would do well to read. On 
the question of imitation look up Thorndike and McDou- 
gall in the works already cited. 



CHAPTER XII 
HOW RELIGION GROWS 

HOW shall one describe the natural growth of 
religion in a human life? It seems almost 
an impossible task. For religion is more than a 
natural growth. It is a living, personal relation with 
God. It cannot be described in terms merely of 
"laws" and "periods of development." It depends 
upon God's own uncounted, resourceful ways, as in 
love and mercy He seeks to reach the minds and 
hearts and to enlist the wills of His children. And 
it depends upon their ways — ways sometimes reason- 
able but often ignorant, capricious and self-willed — 
to which He adapts His measures of redeeming 
grace. The growth in the soul of real religion — as 
distinguished from pious convention — is a matter su- 
premely individual. One touches here upon the 
inmost secret of each separate life. 

These very statements, however, imply that reli- 
gion has a natural as well as a supernatural side. 
Growth in religion depends in part upon the growth 
of the human self as a whole. Even God must take 
His children as they are, if He is to help them be- 
come what they can be and ought to be. He must fit 
His help to their need, His teaching to their under- 
standing. One's religion thus reflects what he is. 

93 



94 TALKS TO SUNDAY SCHOOL TEACHERS 

"When I was a child, I spake as a child, I under- 
stood as a child, I thought as a child : but when I be- 
came a man, I put away childish things." 

In a general way, three stages may be distin- 
guished through which most persons pass as they 
grow in religion. There is the stage, first, of nur- 
ture in religion and learning about religion; second, 
of getting religion as a conscious personal posses- 
sion; third, of using and understanding religion in 
maturing Christian service and experience. Char- 
acterizing each by a single phrase, we may speak of 
the stages of Christian nurture, Christian decision or 
conversion, and Christian experience. The first 
stage corresponds in general to childhood; the sec- 
ond, to adolescence; the third, to mature life. 

To little children, religion is a relatively objective 
affair. It constitutes an atmosphere in which they 
find themselves, an environment in which they are 
nurtured; it offers something to be learned about. 
They accept it, as they do everything else, as a mat- 
ter of course. It does not present itself to them as 
a way of life that calls for personal decision. Chil- 
dren do not yet, as they will later, feel an inward 
need of God. This is for many reasons: because 
they are directly and completely dependent upon the 
parents, whose care seems to them to be all-sufficient; 
because their range of interests is small, their time- 
span short, and their life more of a moment-by-mo- 
ment affair than it will be later; because they are not 
yet experiencing the full tug of sinful temptations; 
because they have not yet gained those ideals of 
reasonableness and of moral and spiritual unity of 



HOW RELIGION GROWS 95 

life that will in due time beget the divine discontent 
of the adolescent years. 

This is not to say, however, that the religious life 
of little children is unimportant. Quite the con- 
trary, it is all-important that in childhood such an 
objective relation to religion be acquired and such 
growth in religion begun as shall insure intelligent 
and right decision when the great subjective issue pre- 
sents itself. In his striking book on "The Corner- 
stone of Education," Dr. Edward Lyttelton, speak- 
ing from long experience as the head master of a 
famous English public school, records his conviction 
that the great moral and spiritual alternative is really 
decided for most boys in the course of their first 
eight years of life as children in the home of their 
parents. The conversions which take place in the 
teens or later, he believes, in so far as they are not 
directly miraculous interpositions of divine grace, 
are to be accounted for as the coming to full result 
and to clear consciousness of the influences of these 
early years. 

How shall we help our children to acquire this 
right objective relation to religion? By true instruc- 
tion, most obviously; by telling them about God and 
teaching them His ways as these have been revealed 
to us in Christ Jesus. A little child's innocent trust- 
ful credulity opens his mind to the truths of religion 
as to new ideas of every sort. 

Children will understand what we tell them in 
terms of their own experiences, of course, and the 
result may often seem odd to our more sophisticated 
minds. "God is everybody's papa ; He will spank us 



96 TALKS TO SUNDAY SCHOOL TEACHERS 

if we are naughty," was one tiny youngster's way of 
putting the idea of the Fatherhood of God. 

As fast, however, as they grow able to understand 
the connections of events and to mark off fact from 
fancy, they will begin to criticize their own notions 
in this as in other fields, to rework them, and to press 
on toward more adequate ideas. There are real 
metaphysical and theological issues involved in such 
a question as that of a boy of ten: "Mamma, God 
must have known that Adam and Eve would eat that 
apple, and they couldn't help doing it if He planned 
to have them do it. So why did He blame them?" 
It is the parent's privilege and duty to answer such 
questions frankly and directly, with the truth as he 
himself believes it. The unforgivable sin here is to 
lie to your children ; and it is only a shade less culpa- 
ble to put them off with the promise that when they 
are older you will explain these things to them. 

But instruction, however true, is not enough. 
Children understand what we tell them, it has just 
been said, in terms of their own experiences. It is 
the parent's duty to afford to his children such experi- 
ences as may rightly serve as the apperceptive basis 
for their understanding of the great truths of reli- 
gion. So only can he give body and content to the 
ideas which he seeks to impart in words. 

The child's experiences of the world of nature 
about him may constitute such an apperceptive basis 
for religion. Fear, wonder, curiosity, reverence, 
dependence, faith, trust, the impulse to union and the 
desire to feel at home in the world — all these psycho- 
logical motives to religion enter in an elemental way 



HOW RELIGION GROWS 97 

into the life of the child as they have entered into the 
life of the race of which he is a member. The 
father and mother who give to their little ones a 
concrete acquaintance with and understanding of the 
great world in which they live, may readily interpret 
that world to them in religious terms, not as a sub- 
stitute for, but in addition to, the scientific descrip- 
tion of the same facts. 

The child's social experiences are yet more funda- 
mental and more direct in their bearing upon his un- 
derstanding of religion. The home life of the fam- 
ily does more to determine the moral and religious 
character of the children than any amount of instruc- 
tion. Horace Bushnell used a true figure of speech, 
when he said that no child is fully born when his lit- 
tle body first come to the light, but that his mental, 
moral and spiritual nature is still held in the psychical 
matrix of family life and molded by its influences 
quite as really as his physical being had been held 
and shaped by the life of the mother. The child of 
a genuinely religious home acquires religion natu- 
rally through association with his elders. Instruction 
in religion but furnishes him an explanation of the 
motives underlying the daily life in which he shares. 
He can understand the Fatherhood of God because 
of what he feels fatherhood to be in his own home. 
And his own delight in helping, sharing, and caring 
for others constitutes the beginning within him of 
experiences really Christian. 

At some time or other in the adolescent years, 
religion presents itself for personal decision. God 
claims the maturing life. To each of His children. 



98 TALKS TO SUNDAY SCHOOL TEACHERS 

He comes in the way that seems to Him best. Some 
make the decision quietly, hardly knowing the crisis 
till it is past and they find themselves rejoicing in a 
new strength. Some make it in stress of spirit and 
penitence of soul, for conversion is for them a real 
turning about from the ways of darkness to those of 
light. But in any case, and whatever the form in, 
which the issue presents itself, the turning of the 
soul to God is the more sure if religion has been 
growing within throughout all the years of child- 
hood. 

The other night, when two little boys were get- 
ting ready for bed, the younger, aged three, com- 
plained that he was afraid; and the mother, busy 
about her tasks, overheard the older, aged five, say 
something to him about "Trust." "What was that?" 
she asked. "Oh, I was just telling brother to do 
what I do when I feel afraid." "What do you do?" 
"I just say, 'In Thee do I put my trust,' and then I 
am not afraid. That is what Miss B. taught me in 
Sunday school." A child's magic talisman, the cyni- 
cal will say; but who that knows children can doubt 
that here is a root of real religion? Imbedded in the 
soil of expanding experience and nourished in the 
life of a Christian home, one may hope that the little 
prayer will grow with the child who said it. If it 
does, one need not fear for the man that is to be. 

FOR INVESTIGATION AND DISCUSSION 

I. What do you understand by religion? In what sense 
is it a natural aspect of human life, and in what sense super- 
natural ? 



HOW RELIGION GROWS 99 

2. Discuss the characteristics of each of the three steps 
of growth in religion, which are distinguished in the chap- 
ter. 

3. Why is religion a relatively objective affair to little 
children ? 

4. What do you think of the truth or falsehood of Dr. 
Lyttelton's position as reported in this chapter. 

5. Give examples of children's questions which show how 
they are reworking their religious ideas and pressing on to 
more adequate concepts of God and of His relation to the 
world. State how you would answer each of these ques- 
tions. 

6. The importance of the child's life in the home as an 
apperceptive basis for his understanding of religion. 

7. Describe various types of religious decision and of the 
conversion experience. 



FOR FURTHER READING 

Two splendid books are Mrs. E. E. R. Mumford: "The 
Dawn of Religion in the Mind of the Child" and Hugh 
Hartshorne: "Childhood and Character." Horace Bush- 
nell's "Christian Nurture" is a classic; and Edward Lyt- 
telton's "The Cornerstone of Education" states like prin- 
ciples from the standpoint of an English schoolmaster. Prac- 
tical counsels for the parent and teacher are in George 
Hodges: "The Training of Children in Religion" and L. 
A. Weigle and H. H. Tweedy: "Training the Devotional 
Life." 



CHAPTER XIII 
WHY A TRAINED TEACHER? 

WHY should one be trained to teach? Why, 
especially, should one be trained in methods 
of teaching? Is it not enough to know thoroughly 
the subject that one is to teach? Will not right 
methods then be followed naturally? 

Such questions have been asked concerning educa- 
tion in general. The experience of the past forty or 
fifty years in America, as in England and France, 
has made clear the answer. The primary qualifi- 
cation of every teacher, of course, is to know his 
subject, completely and thoroughly and in relation 
to the rest of human knowledge. But a knowledge 
of subject-matter is not enough. To know is one 
thing; and to be able to teach is another. Right 
methods of teaching do not come naturally to every 
possessor of adequate knowledge and good inten- 
tions. Such methods are worked out slowly in the 
course of actual experience, just as methods are 
worked out in any other field of human endeavor. 
And the teacher of to-day, just as the worker in 
other fields, may profit by the experience of all who 
have gone before him and who are working with 
him. He may learn much from others, not simply 
about what to teach, but how to teach. 

IOO 



WHY A TRAINED TEACHER? 101 

We hear it said sometimes that teachers are born 
not made. This aphorism has about as much truth 
when affirmed of teachers as it has when affirmed of 
business men, physicians, ministers, or any other class 
of workers who have much to do with people and 
with human values. There are born business men, 
born doctors — yes, born engineers and born farmers 
— in much the same sense as there are born musi- 
cians, born poets, and born teachers. For each of 
these vocations calls for certain qualifications of ca- 
pacity and temperament which are matters of orig- 
inal endowment. Yet in each case success depends, 
not simply upon the indispensable original ability 
or aptitude, but upon training and opportunity. The 
work of the teacher is no exception to the rule. It 
would be a strange paradox if teachers, whose work 
is education, could not themselves be educated for 
that work. It is doubtless true that teachers are 
"born" ; it does not follow that they are "not made.' , 

Here and there, indeed, we do find some engaged 
in the work of teaching who imagine themselves to 
be teachers by the grace of God, born, not made, 
and excused by birthright from some of the pains 
and cares which necessity lays upon others. These 
good folk loftily sneer at "pedagogy" and seem to 
believe it their duty to present their subject in as 
difficult and uninteresting a fashion as they can, in 
order that their pupils may gain more mental "dis- 
cipline" by conquering it. 

But the world is going by these folk. The steady 
growth and development of normal schools, the in- 
creasing requirements for the certification of teach- 



102 TALKS TO SUNDAY SCHOOL TEACHERS 

ers, the establishment of colleges of education and 
of departments of education in colleges and univer- 
sities, the application of experimental methods to 
educational processes and to the measurement of 
the abilities and achievements of children, the or- 
ganization and work of such professional bodies as 
the National Society for the Scientific Study of Edu- 
cation — these are some of the evidences of the move- 
ment in our time which is raising the work of the 
teacher to the level of a profession. Teaching is no 
longer a job for old women and incompetent men, 
and it is becoming less and less a stop-gap or step- 
ping-stone for youngsters who are looking forward 
to other things. It has become a profession, con- 
scious of its aims, intelligent in its methods, and pos- 
sessed of a growing technique. 

But why should one be trained to teach religion? 
it may still be asked. Religion is different from 
mathematics, science, or history 7 . It is a way of life, 
rather than a body of ideas. It is the sort of thing, 
we sometimes hear it said, that must be "caught, not 
taught." 

The answer is that a way of life can be taught 
quite as well as a body of ideas, provided we con- 
ceive education to be the vital process that it can and 
ought to be. So to present a way of life that it will 
be surely and rightly and permanently "caught" is 
to teach. And it is a sort of teaching that demands 
more, rather than less, trained skill, than the kind 
of teaching that aims simply to acquaint the pupil 
with ideas — if there be teaching of that kind. 

Let us think simply of the Sunday school teacher. 



WHY A TRAINED TEACHER? 103 

Ought he or she to be trained to teach religion, as 
the public-school teacher is trained to teach other 
things? With full recognition of the differences be- 
tween both the tasks and the salaries of the two 
types of teacher, one cannot but answer Yes. The 
Sunday school is not the public school, and cannot 
borrow its methods. But the Sunday school will not 
fully succeed until it does its own work as well rela- 
tively as the public school does the work that be- 
longs to it. And that depends upon the Sunday 
school securing teachers as well trained relatively as 
those of the public school. We have a long way to 
go before that goal is reached; but that is no rea- 
son why we should not start. 

Let two things be granted. First, that religion 
is not a merely human product. No teacher can 
beget it within a pupil if the grace of God be not 
there. But that is no reason why we should not 
equip ourselves in the best way that we can, and use 
every effort to accomplish our share in the redemp- 
tion and religious education of God's children. Wc 
can always count on Him. The question is whether 
He can count on us. 

Second, let it be granted that no teacher can beget 
religion within a pupil unless he possess religion 
himself. He cannot teach what he does not know ; he 
cannot give what he does not have. A personal re- 
ligious life is the primary qualification of a Sunday 
school teacher, just as a knowledge of subject-matter 
is the primary qualification of any other teacher. 
But personal consecration does not insure ability 
to teach religion to children, any more than knowl- 



104 TALKS TO SUNDAY SCHOOL TEACHERS 

edge in any other field carries with it ability to teach. 
To personal religion, as to knowledge, must be added 
training. As a matter of fact, one may wonder 
whether that personal consecration is complete which 
uses itself as an excuse to evade the hard work of 
training for the Master's service. 

The Sunday school is beginning to share in the gen- 
eral movement which is raising the standards of the 
teaching profession. Most of the considerations 
that have led to better training for teachers in gen- 
eral may be brought forward in support of better 
training for Sunday school teachers. We name just 
three fundamental reasons why one who is under- 
taking to teach religion in the Sunday school, even 
though possessed of a good general education and 
of a deep personal religious life, should seek by defi- 
nite training to prepare himself for that work. 

i. The Sunday school teacher deals with imma- 
ture, growing minds. He dare not present his ma- 
terial in a merely logical order, therefore; his meth- 
od must be psychological. He must understand 
children. He must be able to put his teaching in 
terms that match up with their experiences and an- 
swer to their problems and needs. He must know 
how things strike them and how to stir them to ap- 
preciation of the best. He must understand how 
their minds work and their wills develop; and he 
must know how to use the natural laws so revealed 
to him. 

2. The Sunday school teacher deals with religion 
upon the level of conscious ideas. The children in 
his class are getting religion from many sources — 



WHY A TRAINED TEACHER? 105 

from the influences and experiences of home life, 
from association with others in acts of worship and 
in ways of living, from nature about them, and from 
the first vague stirrings of conscience within them. 
It is the business of the Sunday school teacher to 
bring together these manifold influences and to help 
them to express themselves in intelligent convictions. 
It is his function to explain life to children in re- 
ligious terms. It is of the utmost importance, there- 
fore, that his own ideas be clear and his beliefs well 
founded. He may not rest content, as some others 
may, with a religion merely personal, of pious habit 
but unintelligent, not thought through. 

3. The Sunday school teacher must cooperate 
with other educational influences in the life of the 
children he teaches. The Sunday school does not 
have the whole job of education. The children are 
being educated as well by public school and home 
and Church, by libraries and moving-picture shows, 
by parties and picnics, public festivals, newspapers 
and posters, and by the whole round of sights and 
sounds and activities that characterize the life in 
which they find themselves. The Sunday school 
teacher must cooperate with, match up to, and in- 
terpret the various elements of this educative me- 
lange and seek to make them fall into a unity of 
life motived by religion. It is no easy task. To 
take the most obvious relation, the Sunday school 
teacher should both understand the teaching which 
his pupils are getting in the public schools and be 
able so to shape his own teaching in comparison with 
it, in point both of matter and method, that he will 



106 TALKS TO SUNDAY SCHOOL TEACHERS 

command their attention and respect. And that 
means that he must be as well trained relatively as 
the week-day teachers of his children. 



FOR INVESTIGATION AND DISCUSSION 

1. In what sense may we properly speak of a "born 
teacher" ? 

2. What are some essential qualifications of a good 
teacher? 

3. What qualifications, if any, additional to these should 
the Sunday school teacher possess? 

4. Discuss the three reasons given in the text why a 
Sunday school teacher should have definite training to teach. 

5. Describe some successful methods for the training 
of Sunday school teachers. 

FOR FURTHER READING 

G. H. Palmer, in "The Ideal Teacher," describes the 
qualifications of teachers in general; G. H. Betts, in "How 
to Teach Religion," the qualifications, aims and methods 
of teachers of religion. W. S. Athearn, in "Religious 
Education and American Democracy," and in "A National 
System of Education" presents convincingly the argument for 
better church schools and for trained teachers. In "The 
City Institute for Religious Teachers" the same author 
describes a method for the training of teachers which, un- 
der his guidance, has passed the experimental stage. 



CHAPTER XIV 

THE TEACHER'S KNOWLEDGE OF THE 
LESSON 

IRE MEMBER that, as a student in high school 
and college, I used to think that my teachers 
had a far easier time than I. Their schedule of 
class hours was much less exacting, I thought, and 
they could go over the same old material year after 
year; moreover, they had the inestimable advantage 
of being able to keep their books open throughout 
the whole recitation and to refer to these whenever 
they chose. 

Since becoming a teacher, I have found out that 
the easier task is that of the student. The teacher 
must know so much more and must study so much 
harder than I had thought. Every class makes de- 
mands upon its teacher far greater than any that he 
can make upon it. 

The teacher must not simply know the lesson; he 
must know it in such a way that he can cause others 
to know it. That is much more difficult. It means 
that he must understand his pupils as well as the les- 
son itself, and that he must be able to present it 
clearly and in such fashion as to arouse their inter- 
est, command their attention and set them to work 
upon it, He will fail if he be lacking in any one of 

107 



108 TALKS TO SUNDAY SCHOOL TEACHERS 

three respects: in his mastery of the subject, in his 
understanding of his pupils, or in his ability to 
bring the two together. 

We are now to think only of the first of these 
qualifications of the teacher; in subsequent chapters 
we shall think of the other two. The teacher's mas- 
tery of the lesson material cannot be too complete 
and thorough. "Oh, I cannot teach a Sunday school 
class. I do not know enough" is perhaps the most, 
frequent excuse given to pastors and superintend- 
ents who are seeking new teachers. And all too 
often the statement is true. The person asked does 
not know enough to be a good teacher, without a 
definite course of preparation, not simply in psy- 
chology and pedagogy, but in the subject-matter 
itself which is to be taught. But that is no reason 
why he should not accept the responsibility and un- 
dertake courses of study which will in time cause 
him to know enough. 

In these days of graded lessons and of graded 
adaptations even of the Uniform Lessons, we are 
rightly laying great emphasis upon the principle that 
the child should be the center of the curriculum. 
Understand your children and fit your teaching to 
their needs, is the watchword of every convention, 
institute, and teacher-training class. It is well that 
it should be so. It is a counsel that the Sunday 
school has sorely needed and needs to-day. It can- 
not be over-emphasized. 

But we must not forget the other side. The child 
is not the sole determining factor. We must have 
something to give to our children. We must be 



KNOWLEDGE OF THE LESSON 109 

able to wake them to needs which they would not 
otherwise feel. We must have knowledge and skill 
to guide them into the truth. We shall fail if we do 
not ourselves understand the great eternal princi- 
ples of right and mercy and truth which God has 
taught the world through His life among men and 
in men, and most of all through His revelation of 
Himself in Christ Jesus. It is that knowledge above 
all else that our children need, as they become able 
to understand it. And that knowledge constitutes 
the subject-matter of Sunday school teaching. 

A common bane of Sunday school teaching has 
been the haziness of the teacher's own ideas concern- 
ing the truths of religion. Too many teachers are 
just good, well-meaning Christian folk, whose be- 
liefs are rooted in a surface soil of authority or 
convention and ultimately grounded in a loyal devo- 
tion to the right as it is given them to see the right, 
but who have never attained to any clear and con- 
sistent view of just what they believe and why they 
believe. Practically, volitionally, emotionally, they 
are all right — sound and true Christians; but their 
intellectual grasp of religion is not all that it should 
be. They have never thought their beliefs through. 
They have never gotten adequate and clear ideas 
concerning the deeper motives of their own lives. 

But is this necessary? one may ask. Are not 
Paul's letters full of rejoicing that the gospel is not 
merely to the wise — and more than that, of condem- 
nation for the wise in their own conceits? May not 
one be a good Christian without knowing very 
much? The answer must be Yes — and No. One 



110 TALKS TO SUNDAY SCHOOL TEACHERS 

can indeed be a good Christian without understand- 
ing all about theology, or even without knowing very 
much save that God is his Father and Christ his Sa- 
viour. But no Christian has placed his faith upon 
a permanent basis until he has understood it in terms 
consistent with his general circle of ideas and be- 
liefs respecting the world about him and life as a 
whole. And surely no Christian who undertakes to 
teach another should rest content with anything less 
than the clearest understanding of the truth that he 
can gain. For the work or the teacher moves large- 
ly upon the level of conscious ideas. "I had rather 
speak five words with my understanding, that I 
might teach others also, than ten thousand words in 
a tongue." The teacher is set to edify others; and 
for that he needs understanding. 

But is it possible? one may ask again. Can we 
gain a clear intellectual understanding of the truths 
of religion? Are they not too great for our minds 
to grasp ? Is there not a certain point beyond which 
we must just believe? Again the answer must be 
Yes — and No. It is true that our finite minds can- 
not comprehend the whole of the infinite wisdom of 
God; and true that He has hidden many things from 
us and thus given us what is better than knowledge 
— the opportunity to believe in Him, to trust Him, 
and in loyal faith to live and work as though seeing 
that which is as yet unseen. But that does not mean 
that we cannot understand God and His ways, nor 
that we must "just believe" without rational 
grounds, in blind and unintelligent credulity. Faith 
is different from credulity. It both underlies knowl- 



KNOWLEDGE OF THE LESSON 111 

edge and grows out of knowledge. It has grounds 
that are rational and conditions that may be defined. 
Every teacher ought to know something of the logic 
of belief and understand what sort of evidence we 
are justified in seeking for our fundamental faiths. 

"To teach even a small thing well, one must be 
large," wrote Prof. George Herbert Palmer in a 
notable passage on "The Ideal Teacher." The 
teacher's knowledge of any particular lesson springs 
out of and in a sense reflects all that the teacher is 
and knows. Certainly a Sunday school teacher's 
knowledge of any particular lesson does not depend 
simply upon his specific study of that one bit of 
material; it is rooted and grounded in the whole of 
his personal religious life and in the body of ideas 
that have come in his mind to underlie and express 
that life. Only that teacher who both is a Christian 
and knows why he is a Christian, who has a true and 
adequate knowledge of the Bible as a whole and has 
thought through as well as lived through its teach- 
ings, will be sure to get the meaning of each lesson 
as it comes and to teach it with effectiveness and 
power. 

Sunday school teachers stand in especial need of 
Professor Palmer's counsel. One of the greatest 
limitations of Sunday school teaching in general, in 
addition to the intellectual haziness of which we 
have been thinking, has been the hand-to-mouth 
method of lesson preparation which so many teach- 
ers have followed. It has perhaps been fostered, 
quite unintentionally, by the International system 
of dated lessons, with various lesson helps published 



112 TALKS TO SUNDAY SCHOOL TEACHERS 

just in time to be used. This hand-to-mouth meth- 
od, again, has fostered the general tendency toward 
pious moralizing which is the line of least resistance 
for the poorly prepared teacher. I remember one 
of my own teachers — luckily for a short time only — 
whose invariable method of abusing our minds was 
to ask one of the class to read a verse, then to ask : 
"Now, what do we learn from that?" Receiving 
no answer, usually, he would take that verse as a 
text for a little sermon; then he would proceed to 
the next verse, which would be treated in the same 
way. 

The newer lessons, both graded and improved 
uniform, do not lend themselves as readily to treat- 
ment of this sort. They bring out more explicitly 
the continuity of Biblical history and the coherence 
of Christian truth. They make greater demands 
upon the mental powers of both teacher and pupil. 
But the knowledge that they make possible is worth 
the effort. And the Sunday school must raise itself 
to a higher level, intellectually, if it is to occupy its 
place among the educational institutions of our day 
and live up to its opportunity and responsibility. 

The newer teacher-training courses, too, are plac- 
ing larger emphasis upon adequate knowledge. The 
time was, within the memory of many of us, when 
one was considered to be "trained to teach" if he 
had drilled into his memory the books of the Bible, 
an outline of Biblical history, and sundry lists of 
persons, places, dates, and the like. With the more 
definite recognition of the principle of gradation, 
larger emphasis was laid upon psychology and much 



KNOWLEDGE OF THE LESSON 113 

upon devices of method in teaching. Without les- 
sening of effort along these lines, we now see more 
clearly the importance of replacing the Biblical drill 
of earlier days with courses which will equip the 
teacher with that broad and thorough knowledge 
of subject-matter which is a primary qualification 
for effective teaching. 



FOR INVESTIGATION AND DISCUSSION 

1. Can one be a good Christian without having a clear 
intellectual grasp of the doctrines of the Christian re- 
ligion? Give reasons for your answer. 

2. Can one be a good Sunday school teacher without 
clear ideas respecting the fundamental convictions and doc- 
trines of the Christian religion? Give reasons for your 
answer. 

3. What do you understand by faith as contrasted with 
and as related to knowledge? What sort of evidence are 
we justified in seeking for our fundamental faiths? How 
are you going to explain faith to your Sunday school class ? 

4. What are some of the steps involved in the teacher's 
preparation of each lesson? 

5. Are the graded lessons harder to teach than the old 
uniform lesson ? Give reasons for your answer. 

6. What are some of the differences between the older 
and newer courses for the training of Sunday school teach- 
ers? 

FOR FURTHER READING 

Burton and Mathews: "Principles and Ideals for the 
Sunday School"; G. H. Betts: "How to Teach Religion"; 
J. M. Gregory: "The Seven Laws of Teaching." 



CHAPTER XV 
THE TEACHING PROCESS 

THREE weeks after the opening of college, one 
year, a senior of high standing presented him- 
self at the office of the dean, with the request that 
he be permitted to drop a certain course and substi- 
tute another in a different department. "But I 
thought you had spoken to me last year of how hap- 
pily you looked forward to that course," objected 
the dean. "What is the matter?" "I still want the 
subject," was the answer; "and I think that Profes- 
sor So-and-so is the most brilliant man I know; but 
honestly, dean, he is the poorest teacher I know 
too." 

The dean decided to attend a few sessions of 
that class. At the end he felt much as the student 
did. Professor So-and-so was a brilliant man, there 
was no denying that; perhaps the best scholar on 
the faculty. But he was not a good teacher. He 
did all the talking himself; and what he said was 
richly suggestive, often profound, at times sparkling 
with the wit that was native to the man, and always 
abounding in allusions and side references that bore 
evidence to the encyclopedic scope of his knowledge. 
But his material lacked organization and adapta- 
tion. He did not begin at a natural beginning, lead 

114 



THE TEACHING PROCESS 115 

out into a well-ordered body of exposition, and drive 
through to a conclusive end. He never seemed 
clear as to just what he might presuppose his pupils 
to know. He made no effort, apparently, to put 
himself upon their level and to adapt what he said 
to their interests and needs; he frequently dived 
straight into whatever phase of the subject chanced 
at the time to be uppermost in his own thinking or 
investigation. If occasionally he became uneasily 
conscious that perhaps not all of his audience had 
been able to dive with him, he began to flounder. 
He lugged in stories; he multiplied explanations, 
laborious and out of place; he backed and turned 
and filled in, all with an air of the utmost patience 
and with a trace of condescension. He entertained 
the superficial; he mystified the earnest; and the best 
students took him as a sort of condiment, and mas- 
tered the subject almost as much in spite of him as 
because of him. 

The exhibition that Professor So-and-so gave be- 
fore his classes, in short, was not teaching. He 
went about it as though he were put there to get 
the lesson out of his system, rather than into the 
pupil's. 

His procedure was mistaken in two fundamental 
respects. First, he assumed that telling things to 
pupils is teaching them. Now telling undoubtedly 
has its place in the teaching process — at times when 
the teacher finds it best to tell facts to his pupils 
which they cannot find out for themselves, or would 
find out only at the expense of too much time and 
effort; when he is called upon to explain some diffi- 



116 TALKS TO SUNDAY SCHOOL TEACHERS 

cult point, to illustrate some principle, or to clear up 
some obscurity that they cannot of themselves under- 
stand; when he seeks to awaken desirable emotions 
and to arouse right attitudes within them by the con- 
crete and stirring presentation of some story or 
poem, bit of history or biography. 

But such telling is more or less incidental; it is 
part of a larger teaching process. To teach is to 
arouse the pupils themselves to mental activity, and 
to direct and guide that activity. The teacher who 
tells everything to his class is not apt to stir them 
to think for themselves. They will sit more or less 
inert, receiving impressions but not digesting them. 
And he has no way to check up what is happening 
within them. He cannot tell whether they are get- 
ting right or wrong impressions. He is so busy 
pouring in that he does not stop to draw out. For 
all he knows, they may be acquiring ideas that are 
oddly distorted or almost wholly false. 

Yet how often one meets a Sunday school teacher 
who says with a certain air of pride: "You know, 
my class wants me to do all the talking. They say 
that they enjoy it so." Of course they do, because 
that is the lazy, happy-go-lucky way for them. They 
need do no work if the teacher will do it all. The 
poor misguided teacher follows them along the line 
of least resistance, and accepts it as a tribute to his 
ability as an attractive, interesting talker. 

Professor So-and-so's second fundamental mis- 
take was his failure to adapt his teaching to the 
knowledge and experience, the interests and pur- 
poses, of his pupils. He kept handing out to them 



THE TEACHING PROCESS 117 

what was in his head, without taking account of 
what was in their heads. 

He was essaying an impossible thing. No teacher 
can simply take an idea out of his own head and put 
it into a pupil's head, unchanged, as though it were 
a sort of brick. All that the teacher can do is to ex- 
press, in words and in his control of the pupil's ex- 
periences, what his ideas are, and thereby to stimu- 
late and guide the pupil to formulate adequate and 
true ideas for himself. The pupil makes his own 
ideas ; no one can do that for him. And he always 
makes his ideas in part of old material. He under- 
stands the new only by associating it with the old; 
he grasps the hitherto unknown only in terms of its 
relations to what he has already known. This is the 
familiar elemental principle of apperception. 

One of the first essentials of good teaching, there- 
fore, is that it begins at the level of the pupil's 
knowledge and experience. The teacher should 
seek to understand, as fully as possible, what his 
pupils already know; and he should come into living, 
sympathetic touch with their aspirations and inter- 
ests. This previous knowledge, these aspirations 
and interests, constitute the stuff with which he has 
to help them build the new structure of ideas and 
purposes at which he aims. Unless he knows that 
stuff and how to use it, there will always remain an 
element of uncertainty about his work. He can- 
not be quite sure that his pupils are going away with 
just the ideas that he wanted them to get. 

One of the most remarkable things about Jesus' 
teaching is the way that he used the stuff that was al- 



118 TALKS TO SUNDAY SCHOOL TEACHERS 

ready in the minds of his hearers. He never taught 
abstractly. He was constantly asking questions that 
drew men out. He was always ready with some 
concrete case, some figure of speech, analogy, or 
story that made his teaching clear to the common 
run of folk. It is important, moreover, to note the 
sort of things that he told stories about — about fish- 
ermen and their nets, a shepherd and his sheep, a 
sower and his seed; about the weeds that grow up 
to choke the grain ; about sons, obedient and disobe- 
dient, stay-at-home and prodigal; about a woman 
and her yeast; about another woman, her money and 
her broom; about wedding feasts and marriage pro- 
cessions; about debtors, thieves, and judges; about 
an absent landlord and a cheating rent-agent; about 
a man, even, who gets out of bed at midnight to lend 
a neighbor bread, lest his continued knocking upon 
the door should wake the children. 

These are stories of ordinary, every-day life. 
Things like these were happening all the while 
among the people to whom he spoke. And that is 
just why he was able to turn these stories to such 
splendid account, and to convey through them the 
most profound of spiritual truths. He was using the 
material that was at hand. "The common people 
heard him gladly." That was in part, at least, be- 
cause they could understand him. His teaching was 
put in terms drawn from their experience, and an- 
swered to their needs. 

Here are two principles, then, that are in the na- 
ture of the case fundamental to the teaching proc- 
ess. The teacher must rouse the pupil to think and 



THE TEACHING PROCESS 119 

do for himself; and he must help the pupil to use 
what knowledge he already possesses as a basis for 
his understanding of new experiences and his con- 
struction of new ideas. 

There is a simple test which any teacher can ap- 
ply, to learn whether or not he is doing these two 
things. Do your pupils study their lessons? Or 
do they simply come to class and expect you to en- 
tertain them or to direct their study for the hour 
that you are together? If you have not succeeded 
in creating within them, not simply willingness but 
a desire to do something upon their lessons between 
meetings of the class, you may be sure that your 
teaching is not getting into them as it should. Many 
Sunday school teachers resign themselves too read- 
ily to the idea that "You can't get pupils to study 
their Sunday school lesson any more." It is harder, 
of course, than it was in days less full of distrac- 
tions than these. But it can be done. And it de- 
pends, in the main, upon the teacher himself and 
upon the character of the process that he conducts 
under the name of teaching. 



FOR INVESTIGATION AND DISCUSSION 

1. Can you recall any teacher whom you have had, 
who was very brilliant, yet could not teach ? What was his 
trouble? 

2. What are the functions and what are the limitations 
of telling in the teaching process? 

3. What is the psychological principle of apperception, 
and what is its bearing upon the teaching process? 



120 TALKS TO SUNDAY SCHOOL TEACHERS 

4. What is meant by the point of contact in teaching? 

5. Is the test of good teaching fair, which is proposed 
in the last paragraph of the chapter? 



FOR FURTHER READING 

J. M. Gregory: "The Seven Laws of Teaching"; 
Strayer and Norsworthy: "How to Teach"; G. H. 
Betts: "How to Teach Religion." The well-known little 
book on "The Point of Contact in Teaching" by Patterson 
Dubois should be read by every teacher. On Jesus' methods 
see the chapter in Wendt's "The Teaching of Jesus" and 
B. A. Hinsdale: "Jesus as a Teacher," or — best of all — 
T. R. Glover's "The Jesus of History." 



CHAPTER XVI 
HOW TO EXCITE INTEREST 

HOW to excite interest is an old problem — as old 
as teaching itself. Yet it is ever new; you 
face it each time that you meet a class. 

About A. D. 400 one Deogratias, a deacon in the 
Christian church at Carthage, was much troubled 
by this problem. One of his duties was to instruct 
the candidates for baptism. But he seems to have 
been rather lengthy in discourse and prosy in man- 
ner, so that his lectures became tedious, he con- 
fessed, even to himself. In distress, he wrote to 
the best teacher that he knew, Augustine, and asked 
his advice. 

Augustine answered with a little book, "On the 
Catechising of the Uninstructed," which is full of 
insight and good sense. It is a teacher's duty to 
be interesting, he urges; and he proceeds, out of 
his own experience, to show Deogratias how to go 
about it. Not only to know his subject thoroughly, 
but to prepare it carefully, and in due perspective, 
for the purpose of teaching it to each separate 
group ; to take account of his pupils' previous knowl- 
edge and varying types of ability and motive ; to un- 
derstand their points of view and to adapt his teach- 
ing to these; to be himself cheerful in manner and 

121 



122 TALKS TO SUNDAY SCHOOL TEACHERS 

interested in what he is doing; to keep continually 
alert to any signs of misunderstanding or lack of 
interest on the part of his hearers, and to be prompt 
and resourceful in meeting such exigencies — these 
are some of Augustine's counsels. 

"It often happens," he says, "that one who at 
first listened to us with all readiness becomes ex- 
hausted and gapes and yawns and even unwillingly 
exhibits a disposition to depart. When we ob- 
serve that, it becomes our duty to refresh his mind 
by saying something seasoned with an honest cheer- 
fulness and adapted to the matter which is being 
discussed, or something of a very wonderful and 
amazing order, or even, it may be, something of 
a painful and mournful nature. Whatever we thus 
say may be all the better if it affects himself more 
immediately, so that the quick sense of self-concern 
may keep his attention on the alert. At the same 
time, however, it should not offend his spirit of 
reverence by any harshness, but rather win him by 
its friendliness. " 

This is good pedagogy. When the pupil's at- 
tention wanders, the teacher's first concern must be 
to win it back. And his appeal must be, not to com- 
pulsion, or to mere effort of will, but to interest. 
For modern psychology has made it clearer than 
it was even to so good a teacher as Augustine, that 
no pupil does his best, except when his whole mind 
is engaged in interested attention. 

But how? some Deogratias will ask; how can 
I set to work not merely to excite, but to hold and 
direct the interest of my pupils? There can be no 



HOW TO EXCITE INTEREST 123 

set recipe. Each teacher faces, for each lesson, his 
own problem. But certain general counsels may be 
given, in the light of which the problem of each 
day may be solved. 

i. Get interested in the lesson yourself. Study 
it until you find something which sets your mind 
aglow. You cannot hope to arouse enthusiasm 
within your pupils if your own attitude toward what 
you are teaching is one merely of dutiful routine. 

2. Ask yourself just why you are interested in 
that particular thing. Is it because of previous ex- 
periences or present purposes, native temperament, 
education, or reading, or travel? Then ask your- 
self the all-important question to which this intro- 
spection is but preliminary : Will what has interested 
me in this matter interest my pupils also? Is their 
experience enough like mine to make this same an- 
gle of approach as interesting to them as it is to 
me? Sometimes you can honestly answer, Yes: and 
then your way is easy, unless you find, when you ac- 
tually confront them, that you have made a mistake. 
But sometimes your answer must be No. What is 
interesting to yourself, you see even in anticipation, 
will not be interesting to your pupils. Its value to 
you depends too much upon characteristics or ex- 
periences which they do not share. 

3. Find the angle of approach that will interest 
your pupils. You can do this only by understanding 
them well enough to share their point of view. You 
must know what experiences they are having; in 
what occupations, at work or play, they are en- 
gaged; what their ambitions are — what, in short, are 



124 TALKS TO SUNDAY SCHOOL TEACHERS 

the things that actually do interest them from day 
to day. And you must let these determine your ave- 
nue of approach to the new things in which you 
seek to enlist their interest. 

The interests to which you may appeal are of 
three sorts : ( i ) General interests. Some things are 
of interest to everybody at certain times. Anything 
directly connected with the war, for example, en- 
listed the immediate interest and attention of any 
group of men or women or children throughout the 
past six years, provided it was the sort of thing 
that they could in a measure understand. (2) Group 
interests. Some things are of special interest to 
the particular social group to which your pupils be- 
long. These interests differ for the sexes, and change 
with increasing age. The so-called "gang instinct" 
in boys, with its associated interests, to take a fa- 
miliar example, may appear at eight or nine, is apt 
to be at its height between eleven and fourteen, and 
then gradually disappears, or is incorporated into 
a higher system of interests. (3) Individual in- 
terests, determined by the special aptitudes, expe- 
riences, and ambitions of individual pupils. To un- 
derstand these, you must enter as a friend into the 
life of each boy and girl who comes into your class. 

4. Have something new to give to your pupils. 
If you do no more than repeat familiar things, how- 
ever attractive these may be, you will be sure to lose 
their interest and attention. We human folks, old 
and young, are incurably curious. We are eager 
for new knowledge and fresh experiences. And to 
these we pay full attention, while we accept the old 



HOW TO EXCITE INTEREST 125 

and familar in a matter-of-course, habitual, and 
more or less unthinking way. You should always 
be prepared, therefore, with more material than 
was in the text-book; always bring something to 
class that was not accessible to your pupils. Know 
more than they do, and use your knowledge to feed 
their interest. 

5. Make your pupils feel their need of what you 
bring them. Be-ginning as you do with their own 
ideas and interests, you should so shape your ques- 
tions as to reveal to them the incompleteness of 
what they already know, and so give them a motive 
to seek the new knowledge which the lesson offers. 
Every lesson should begin, in a sense, by raising a 
problem in the pupil's minds, which they then set 
themselves to solve. A class of sixteen-year-old beys 
was apathetically droning over the account of the 
three Hebrew princes whom Nebuchadnezzar threw 
into the fiery furnace, when the supervisor, who had 
"dropped in," asked: "Do you think that those three 
princes knew that God would deliver them from the 
fiery furnace?" "Of course," was the unanimous 
reply. "Then what was there heroic in their ac- 
tion?" "Why — I never thought of that," said one 
boy. "Take your Bibles and read it all over again 
carefully, then answer." The question had shown 
the boys a defect in their body of ideas. They set 
to work with a will, and soon found the "But if not," 
which attests the moral heroism of the three He- 
brew princes; and there were no lagging minds 
throughout the rest of that lesson period. 

6. Teach as concretely as you can. That is a fa- 



126 TALKS TO SUNDAY SCHOOL TEACHERS 

miliar counsel, which needs no elaboration. Many 
teachers do not realize, however, how much more 
interested pupils are in a map or diagram or picture 
that is constructed right before their eyes, in im- 
mediate connection with the bit of teaching that it 
is meant to illustrate, than in other maps or dia- 
grams or pictures that may be far more perfect, but 
are ready-made or constructed beforehand and 
brought in for exhibition. Every class, of course, 
ought to have its own blackboard, which the teach- 
er should use freely and effectively. 

7. Make your teaching direct and practical. 
Teachers of religion are handicapped in compari- 
son with public-school teachers, because their work 
brings less immediate and obvious results. A boy 
of six, who had attended Sunday school for two 
years with eager and happy interest, surprised his 
father one Sunday, some two months after he had 
entered public school, by saying, "I don't want to 
go to Sunday school." "Why?" the puzzled fa- 
ther asked. "Because you don't learn anything 
there." His little mind was busy day after day 
with such fascinating practical arts as reading, writ- 
ing, and figuring; and in comparison with these, he 
felt that the Sunday school had nothing to offer. 

Here is a real handicap. We cannot wholly es- 
cape it, for the Sunday school seeks to develop mo- 
tives, ideals, and obligations rather than to train in 
particular habits of skill. But we can do much to 
minimize it; and we can overcome it if we will only 
teach vitally and practically enough, and if we will 
lead our pupils in living and doing as well as in 



HOW TO EXCITE INTEREST 127 

learning. Every Sunday school class ought to be a 
service unit; active, not simply mobilized. And 
every teacher misses his largest opportunity, as well 
as the surest method of enlisting and holding the 
interest of his pupils, who fails to center the intel- 
lectual aspects of his work about the practical prob- 
lems and enterprises of their associated life in Chris- 
tian service. 



FOR INVESTIGATION AND DISCUSSION 

1. What do you understand by interest, and what is 
its relation to attention? 

2. What are the factors which determine the direction 
of one's interest? 

3. What is the best way to begin a lesson? What is 
meant in the traditional lesson plan by the step of prepara- 
tion ? Can all lessons begin by raising a problem ? 

4. Methods of making the lesson concrete. 

5. Can we make the teaching of religion as immediately 
practical as the teaching of the public school ? Give reasons 
for your answer. 

6. The relation of interest and effort in the educative 
process. Ought we interest children or keep them at work 
or do both? 

FOR FURTHER READING 

The books by Gregory, Dubois and Betts listed in the 
last chapter; J. Dewey: "Interest and Effort in Educa- 
tion"; J. G. Fitch: "The Art of Securing Attention"; 
G. H. Betts: "The Recitation"; J. Adams: "Primer cf 
Teaching." 



CHAPTER XVII 
LEARNING BY DOING 

THAT we learn by doing is an old and familiar 
maxim. Yet teachers often forget it, or fail to 
live up to it. To ask pupils to learn by reading or by 
talking is much less trouble, and seems more direct 

But the reading and talking method does not in- 
sure that the pupil gets real and adequate ideas, or 
that he develops the inclination or ability to apply 
these ideas in action. It may mean that his work in 
the class-room deals with mere words, and that his 
real education — his actual understanding of life and 
equipment for it — is something apart, to which the 
words he studies bear no vital relation. 

In the Sunday school we are concerned directly 
with the issues of life itself — with character, serv- 
ice, destiny, and love to God and man. These can 
never be taught simply by talking about them. 
Every Sunday school class ought to be organized 
for service as well as for instruction; every Sunday 
school teacher ought to be a leader in Christian 
life and an inspirer of Christian deeds as well as 
an expositor of Christian beliefs. This is the spe- 
cial application to our work of the old maxim con- 
cerning learning by doing. In a later chapter of this 
book we shall discuss it in some detail. 

There is another application of the maxim which 

128 



LEARNING BY DOING 129 

the Sunday school shares with the public school, 
though both have only begun in late years to un- 
derstand and practice it. In the process of instruc- 
tion it is important not only to appeal to the eyes 
and ears of pupils, and to get them to use their 
tongues, but to give their hands an opportunity to 
do something. Illustrative hand-work is a' type of 
educational activity which is comparatively new in 
most schools, and which is developing rapidly in 
profitable directions, not as an end in itself, but as 
a method of study, recitation, and instruction. 

In connection with their public-school work in his- 
tory, literature, and geography, for example, chil- 
dren may be encouraged to construct sand-table rep- 
resentations of historical scenes such as the landing 
of the Pilgrims or the battle of Quebec, of poems 
such as "Evangeline," or "Snowbound," of stories 
such as "The Three Bears" or "Rip van Winkle"; 
models of Colonial homes, Fulton's steamboat, an 
early railroad train, or the locks of the Panama 
Canal; relief maps of various countries, sand-table 
representations of their industries, and models of 
castles on the Rhine, the dikes of Holland, the sus- 
pension bridge at Niagara Falls, and the like. The, 
range of possible subjects for such hand-work is al- 
most as wide as the school curriculum itself. 

Teachers who have tried it are finding out that 
work of this sort has four chief advantages: 

i. It engages the interest and attention of the 
pupils. They are eagerly absorbed in these tasks 
as they would iiot be in mere reading or writing 
or speaking. 



130 TALKS TO SUNDAY SCHOOL TEACHERS 

2. It helps them to do clear thinking, and to get 
definite ideas and impressions. Many of us older 
folk would find out what vague ideas we have con- 
cerning such subjects, if we set to work to picture 
them in these ways. A child gets a clearer idea 
of what Colonial homes were like, and what sort 
of clothes people wore in those days, if he sees, 
handles, and makes models which give concrete 
shape to the descriptions he hears and reads. 

3. It helps pupils to express what they know. 
Some pupils do best in oral recitation; some when 
they write; and others are more or less at a loss 
for words to speak or write, but love to make and 
handle things and can express themselves best in this 
way. Schools have too often placed a premium upon 
the ability to use language, and have neglected pu- 
pils of this last, more concrete-minded type. Yet 
in the world at large it is the doer, rather than the 
mere talker or writer, who is held in high esteem, 
"It is a good thing," writes a teacher of experience, 
"for such a pupil sometimes to feel a thrill of pride 
in having surpassed his classmates instead of al- 
ways being outstripped by them. Such an expe- 
rience sometimes helps to overcome obstacles in the 
way of his success in other forms of expression. 
His interest in the thing he has made overcomes 
his diffidence, and he tells easily how the work was 
done, and what it implies." * 

4. It supplies pupils with a motive for study. The 

1 The quotation is from Miss Ella V. Dobbs. Her books on 
"Primary Hand-work" and "Illustrative Hand-work" are interest- 
ing, direct and practical. Though they deal with public-school 
work only, the Sunday school teacher will find them very helpful. 



LEARNING BY DOING 131 

boy who is to make a sand-table representation of 
the battle of Quebec, for example, will seek ail the 
information he can get concerning its topography 
and the course of events on that fateful day upon 
the plains of Abraham. And he will not be satis- 
fied with general statements; this information must 
be precise enough to be worked out in a model that 
can stand the criticism of the other members of the 
class. He will read and study with greater inter- 
est and care, because he has an immediate use for 
these facts. 

Sunday school teachers who have tried it are find- 
ing the same advantages in such freely expressive 
work. It was a great step forward when we first 
realized, some years ago, that pupils might use their 
hands as well as their tongues in the Sunday school 
class. But too commonly the hand-work that we 
have offered to our pupils has been of a strictly 
defined, almost dictated type. Their books have 
contained printed questions and little spaces in which 
an answer to each could be written — just so long and 
no more. When a picture could be used to advan- 
tage, these books have left a neatly outlined space 
for it, furnished the picture, and left nothing to 
the pupil except the mechanical act of pasting. If a 
decorative border seemed in place, these books have 
printed one and told the pupil to color it — suggest- 
ing, very likely, the particular color that he should 
use for each detail. It is small wonder that pu- 
pils are not interested in this sort of thing after the 
first novelty wears off. It is all so cut-and-dried, so 
formal and mechanical. It affords the pupil no op- 



132 TALKS TO SUNDAY SCHOOL TEACHERS 

portunity for choice, for initiative, for free expres- 
sion of his own ideas; it gives him no motive for 
study. It is hand-work that enlists nothing else than 
hands. 

The more freely expressive types of hand-work 
are possible to the Sunday school just as to the pub- 
lic school. Drawing and coloring, paper-cutting 
and paper-tearing, poster-making and book-making, 
are methods of great value if pupils be given op- 
portunity through them to express their own ideas, 
rather than merely to give a mechanical finish to 
those of somebody else. Biblical history, literature, 
and geography lend themselves to illustration by the 
same methods of map-making, sand-table represen- 
tation, modeling, and construction which are used in 
connection with the corresponding subjects in the 
public schools. The whole field of Christian mis- 
sions, moreover, is a much-needed part of the re- 
ligious education of our children, which opens to the 
Sunday school a range of subjects for such educa- 
tive hand-work which is almost as wide as that pos- 
sessed by the public school. 

Three questions are raised in the minds of most 
superintendents when they think of undertaking this 
type of hand-work in their schools: When shall we 
have time for it? How shall we meet the expense? 
How can we get competent teachers? Even here, 
the experience of the public school may guide us 
toward the answer to these questions. The book on 
"Illustrative Hand-work," which was quoted above, 
was written to prove, among other things, "that 
work of this kind not only has a place as a regular 



LEARNING BY DOING 133 

form of study and recitation, but that it can be done 
without exceeding the limit of time allotted to the 
subject; that the equipment and materials needed 
are easily obtainable in any school; that work of this 
kind may be carried on in the regular classroom; 
that such methods may be used by teachers who have 
not been trained in the manual arts." 

Illustrative hand-work in the Sunday school will 
not so much demand additional time as vitalize and 
make more profitable our use of the time that we 
have. It will cost more for the Sunday school, rela- 
tively, than for the public school; but that is only 
because the Sunday school has been proceeding upon 
the policy of spending almost nothing for educa- 
tive materials. At most, it costs little ; and children 
may be encouraged to utilize much material that 
otherwise would go to waste. 

The real problem is that of the teachers. They 
must be trained in methods, or they will waste time 
and may fail; and they must be better trained in bib- 
lical history, literature, and geography, for they will 
no longer be able to put their pupils off with vague 
verbal descriptions. But this training is not an im- 
possible task. As a matter of fact, teachers as well 
as children will be more interested in such work than 
in many less tangible things. The training should 
be practical and concrete, leading the teachers them- 
selves to do the kinds of hand-work that they will 
propose to their pupils ; and it should be given to the 
teachers of each department separately, with a view 
to their own specific problems and opportunities. 
It is natural to begin with the teachers of the Junior 



134 TALKS TO SUNDAY SCHOOL TEACHERS 

Department, since it is in this department that such 
methods are of relatively greatest value. 



FOR INVESTIGATION AND DISCUSSION 

1. Observe the use of illustrative hand-work in the 
public schools. What are some of its advantages and 
possible disadvantages ? 

2. What is meant by the project method of teaching as 
this is employed in many public schools? What are its 
advantages and possible disadvantages? 

3. Discuss the possibility of employing project methods 
in the teaching of the Sunday school. 

4. What are some of the differences between the illus- 
trative hand-work described in this chapter and the hand- 
work which has commonly been employed in the Sunday 
school ? 

5. What further steps are needed in the training of 
teachers, if they are to use such methods of hand-work? 

FOR FURTHER READING 

Ella V. Dobbs: "Primary Hand-Work" and "Illus- 
trative Hand-work"; M. S. Littlefield: "Hand-Work 
in the Sunday School"; A. G. Wardle: "Hand-Work in 
Religious Education." For the principles underlying the 
project method of teaching as this is used in the public 
schools see John Dewey: "School and Society" and "De- 
mocracy and Education"; and I. E. Miller: "Education 
for the Needs of Life." 



CHAPTER XVIII 
ATTENTION— ITS NATURE AND LAWS 

ATTENTION!" is the most familiar of 
military commands. It means not only that 
the soldier shall stand with body erect, heels to- 
gether, eyes front, and hands at sides, but that his 
mind shall be alert, ready to hear, understand and 
obey further commands. 

Attention is an attribute of intelligence and will. 
It characterizes activity that is distinctly mental, as 
contrasted with that which is merely physical, in- 
stinctive or habitual. If the mind be thought of as 
a tool, attention is its keen cutting edge. Liken it 
to a theater, and attention is its spotlight; to a 
camera, and attention is its focus. 

Attention is sometimes involuntary. One's atten- 
tion is naturally attracted by stimuli that are sudden, 
intense, strange, unusual, rhythmic or recurrent, by 
pains, hunger-pangs or other signals of organic 
needs, by quick changes and sharp contrasts, or by 
anything moving. It is one of nature's provisions 
for our safety that we should be made to notice 
things like these, which are so often the signs of 
danger. 

When not thus involuntary, attention is in gen- 
eral directed by interest, which may be either ( i ) 

135 



136 TALKS TO SUNDAY SCHOOL TEACHERS 

immediate or remote, (2) native or acquired. In- 
terest is immediate when the present activity or ob- 
ject of attention is interesting or satisfying in itself; 
remote when it is attended to only because it is seen 
to be a means to a further end. Interest is native 
when determined by some one or more of the great* 
instinctive tendencies or capacities which constitute 
original human nature; acquired when determined 
by ideas or habits which have been gained in the 
course of experience. 

The most significant distinction is that between* 
attention which is relatively spontaneous, because 
whole-minded, and that which involves strain and 
effort, because of distracting impulses. When some 
interest gains full possession of the mind — whether 
it be immediate or remote, native or acquired — at- 
tention is easy, and one does his best mental work. 
When, on the other hand, one is not fully interested 
in the task at hand, conscious of conflicting impulses 
and open to distraction, attention is difficult, It 
takes effort to resist the more alluring things and 
to hold one's mind to the chosen object. And the 
mind, naturally, does not work quite as well under 
these forced conditions. 

Attention may be directed either to the things 
of sense-perception or to ideas and thoughts. If 
the former, it is termed sensorial ; if the latter, idea- 
tional. In either case, an object is apt to hold one's 
interest and attention so long as ( 1 ) it offers some- 
thing to be found out or learned, some problem 
to be solved, something fresh to be experienced; 
(2) it does not wholly baffle the efforts of attention 



ATTENTION 137 

to discover its qualities or to solve its problems, but 
begins to yield dividends in the way of insight or 
control or the promise of either; (3) these early 
dividends of insight or result are enough in line with 
one's established standards of worth to be satisfy- 
ing. No object, whether material or ideational, will 
command sustained interest and attention if it* is 
too familiar, if it is too difficult or baffling, or if it 
begins to yield fruits that seem worthless. 

When attention's work is done on any bit of ma- 
terial, it moves on to something else. It is a fa- 
miliar fact that attention cannot long be kept, 
even through effort of will, upon an unchanging ob- 
ject. Inevitably it begins to wander, and we find 
ourselves thinking of something else. The reason 
is obvious. Attention is an instrument of adapta- 
tion. It was given us to discover and understand 
things with, that we might the better adapt ourselves 
to the situations in which we are placed and con- 
trol our environment. As soon as it has found out 
what it can concerning a given object and solved, so 
far as it can see, the problem presented by the situa- 
tion, its work is done. That thing is known; that 
adaptation made. Now what next? 

The directions in which one's attention naturally 
tends, and in which one is able to give sustained at- 
tention, depend, it is clear, upon the ideas, instincts, 
aptitudes, habits and experiences which one already 
has. This is one meaning of the familiar principle 
of apperception — that we grasp the unknown only 
by relating it to the alreadv known, that we under- 
stand the new in terms of the eld. In anv situation, 



138 TALKS TO SUNDAY SCHOOL TEACHERS 

we see what experience has prepared us to see, we 
pay attention to those things to which our interests 
predispose us, we understand what we are fitted to 
understand. I remember meeting a man on the 
return voyage from Europe, some years ago, who 
talked only of the horses that he had seen in the 
various cities and countries which he had visited, de- 
spite the fact that he was a member of a Cook's tour- 
ing party, which had made the customary journey 
under guidance to the well-known circle of historic 
and scenic places. In time he told me his business, 
and then it was explained. He was a ranchman from 
Montana. 

These principles and laws apply to the attention 
of little children as well as to that of adults. But 
their results are different, because children lack the 
experience of older folk. It is highly important that 
the teacher of children should understand the re- 
spects in which they differ from adults in power to 
pay attention. 

i. The child is less able than the adult to pay 
attention to ideas. His attention is primarily sen- 
sorial, rather than ideational. He is a discoverer 
in what is to him a new and fascinating world. He 
is eager to see, hear, touch, handle, do and make 
things. His interests are immediate, rather than 
remote. They are determined by his native instincts, 
rather than by acquired habits and ideas — for he has 
not had time to get any considerable stock of the 
latter. Observe a child and an adult out for a walk 
together, and see how the child is attracted by every 
sense stimulus, while the adult is occupied, rather, 



ATTENTION 139 

with the memories and ideas which are suggested 
by his sense impressions. 

2. Children cannot apprehend as many things at 
once as adults can. Experiments have shown that 
the average grown-up can. comprehend from four to 
five unrelated objects in one flash of vision, but that 
children cannot apprehend as many. Adults, more- 
over, can hold a great many related items together 
before the mind, in a complex system of associated 
facts, which becomes for them, to all practical pur- 
poses, a unitary object of thought and attention. 
Children can make few such connections. It is hard 
for them to think of more than one point at a time. 

3. Closely related to this is the fact that children 
cannot do as many things at once as adults can. An 
experienced chauffeur can use eyes, hand and feet 
in driving his car, yet converse with the friend be- 
side him. The beginner can do no such feat. Re- 
membering the clutch, he is apt to forget the brake ; 
putting his mind on shifting gears, he lets his en- 
gine "die." Now, little children are beginners at al- 
most everything. Learning to ride an Irish Mail, a 
child forgets to steer when he remembers to pull, 
and fails to pull when he remembers to steer. Learn- 
ing to read or write or spell, he centers his atten- 
tion on one aspect of the process at a time; and he 
makes progress only so fast as he gets the habits 
which make mechanical various aspects of these op- 
erations. We are too often unjustly impatient with 
children when we call their attention to something 
that we wish them to know or do, only to find that 



140 TALKS TO SUNDAY SCHOOL TEACHERS 

while thinking of it they forget or fail in other 
things. 

4. Children are not able to continue attention to 
a given object or occupation for so long a period 
of time as adults. They lose interest more quickly, 
and their attention wanders. This is a natural con- 
sequence of their smaller experience and relative 
poverty of ideas. Attention, we have seen, cannot 
be kept long upon an unchanging object. If it is to 
be continued the object must reveal new aspects or 
one's thoughts concerning it must develop. But the 
child's thoughts cannot develop very far; he soon 
comes to the end of his resources. And after he has 
seen in the object or situation all that his limited 
experience fits him to see, his attention moves on to 
something else. 

5. Children are more easily distracted than older 
folk, and less able to force themselves to pay at- 
tention. This, too, is a consequence of their rela- 
tive poverty of experience. They do not enter 
deeply enough into most things to be really ab- 
sorbed, and they have no adequate body of ideas 
to back and sustain the effort to resist distractions 
and hold their minds to a chosen task. It is the 
teacher's business, not to demand or to command the 
attention of his children, but rather to teach so con- 
cretely and well that he will engage their interest 
and capture their attention. 

FOR INVESTIGATION AND DISCUSSION 

I. What do you understand by attention, and what is 
H relation to interest? Discuss the conditions for holding 



ATTENTION 141 

interest and attention which are given in this chapter. 

2. Show by an example from your own experience how 
the direction in which attention naturally tends depends 
upon the ideas, habits, and the instincts which one already 
has. 

3. In what ways do children differ from adults in their 
ability to pay attention? 

4. Give examples from your own experience of chil- 
dren's inability to attend to more than one thing at a time. 

5. What things must you bear in mind concerning chil- 
dren's power to pay attention, when preparing a Sunday 
school lesson to teach to your class? 

FOR FURTHER READING 

The books listed in connection with Chapter XVI be- 
long here as well. Add to them the excellent discussion 
of differences between children and adults, to be found 
in chapters 6 and 10 of Norsworthy and Whitley's 
"Psychology of Childhood." 



CHAPTER XIX 
ILLUSTRATING THE LESSON 

THERE are three ways of illustrating a lesson : 
( I ) By appealing to the pupil's eyes as well 
as to his ears; (2) by presenting cases which exem- 
plify the rule or principle which is to be taught; (3) 
by using analogies which interpret the new lesson 
in terms of some older, more familiar bit of knowl- 
edge which is more or less like it. 

"Seeing is believing," runs the old maxim. Yes, 
and seeing is understanding and remembering too. 
The teacher is foolish who relies upon words merely 
when he might supplement his verbal descriptions 
and explanations with objects, models, pictures, dia- 
grams, and maps. These enable the pupil to see as 
well as to hear; they engage his interest and hold his 
attention; he understands more quickly and more 
clearly; and he remembers longer and more ac- 
curately. 

In his excellent little book on "Experimental 
Psychology in Relation to Education/' Prof. C. W. 
Valentine, of Queen's University, Belfast, describes 
a simple experiment on the value of the map, which 
may easily be tried anywhere. He has written two 
narratives of about one hundred and sixty words 
each, purporting to describe historical events. One 

142 



ILLUSTRATING THE LESSON 143 

tells about the suppression of a revolt among the 
native subjects of King William X, of Zamboo 
Land, A.D. 2100; the other is an account of the 
discovery of Feddah Land, in the reign of Peter 
VI, A.D. 1560. All of the places, characters, and 
incidents are purely imaginary; and the narratives 
present to any one who hears them for the first time 
a body of material as unfamiliar as real history is 
to a child. The two accounts contain the same num- 
ber of items and are of equal difficulty. The first 
is accompanied by a roughly drawn map ; the second 
has none. The experimenter reads the first to a 
group of people, illustrating it by pointing out on the 
map each place and name mentioned. He then cov- 
ers the map and asks each member of the group to 
write down the answers to a list of thirteen ques- 
tions, each of which may be answered by a single 
word or phrase, covering one item of the narrative 
just read. After this has been done, he reads the 
second narrative, devoting to it the same amount of 
time as to the first, but without referring to a map ; 
then he has the members of the group answer a list 
of thirteen questions concerning its items. The num- 
ber of correct answers in each list is then counted 
and the results compared. 

Now and then a person will be found who re- 
members the items of the second narrative better 
than those of the first. But such persons are very 
few; and they usually give as reason the fact that 
their experience in answering the first list of ques- 
tions gave them a hint as to what sort of items they 
should make a special effort to remember in prepa- 



1*4 TALKS TO SUNDAY SCHOOL TEACHERS 

ration for answering the second list. The general 
result invariably is that the facts that were presented 
to both ear and eye are better remembered than 
those that were presented to the ear alone. The 
total number of correct answers given by all the 
members of the group to the questions concerning 
the narrative with a map is from twenty-five to thir- 
ty-five per cent higher than the total number of cor- 
rect answers to the questions concerning the other 
narrative. If the order of procedure be varied, so 
that the purely auditory presentation is made first 
and the presentation with a map second, the differ- 
ence in favor of the map will be even greater. 

An experiment of this sort may be tried by any 
group, whether it has access to the book quoted or 
not. Let the leader of the group simply devise his 
own narratives for this purpose, being careful to 
make them of equal length, not more than 175 
words, and to see to it that each contains at least 
thirteen definite items, such as names, dates, and 
circumstantial details, which may be remembered 
and inquired about. Be sure to make the narratives 
of equal difficulty and ask an equal number of ques- 
tions. The experience of being thus put in the place 
of the children whom they teach, by having their 
memory for unfamiliar material tested, is helpful 
to teachers. It puts them in the attitude of the 
learner once more and helps them to appreciate how 
a child is helped by a map, diagram, or picture. 

In the second of the three senses of the term illus- 
trations are of essential, even indispensable, value. 
No general truth can be adequately taught without 



ILLUSTRATING THE LESSON 145 

presenting to the pupil some, at least, of the partic- 
ular facts and experiences which justify that general 
statement. Without some knowledge of the cases 
which come under a general law, instances of its 
operation, examples of its truth, the pupil has no ba- 
sis for understanding it. In this sense illustrations 
lie at the basis of all inductive reasoning. If the 
children in a public school, for example, are to learn 
the principle that vapor condenses with the fall of 
temperature, the teacher will help them to arrive 
at the principle by a consideration of particular cases 
of its application which have come, or can be 
brought, under their observation — u seeing your 
breath" on a cold day, the frosting of a window 
pane, the cloud of steam from a boiling kettle, the 
fall of rain or snow upon the mountains and not in 
the valleys. 

We think so often of the comparisons that Jesus 
used when he said, "It is like," that we may forget 
how constantly he used illustrations of this more di- 
rect type, actual cases of the application of his prin- 
ciples, and examples of their working. He illustrated 
his injunction not to resist one that is evil by add' 
ing examples of how to act if struck by such a one on 
the right cheek, or if robbed by him of a coat 
through a piece of legal chicanery, or if compelled 
to go with him a mile. He gave the general rule, 
"Do not your righteousness before men to be seen 
of them," and forthwith illustrated it by the appli- 
cation to the particular instances of almsgiving, pray- 
ing, and fasting. He enforced his teaching con- 
cerning God's providing care by citing the ravens. 



146 TALKS TO SUNDAY SCHOOL TEACHERS 

sparrows, the lilies of the field, the grass "which 
to-day is, and to-morrow is cast into the oven." 

When the truth to be taught is such that it cannot 
well be presented to the pupil's vision, and when 
particular cases which exemplify it are not readily 
accessible or are hard for the pupil to understand, 
the teacher must have recourse to the third type of 
illustrations — analogies, comparisons, stories, or 
figures of speech which interpret the new truth in 
terms of its likeness to some other more famil- 
iar facts or experiences. Most of Jesus's parables 
are illustrations of this sort. 

There are pitfalls in the path of the inexperienced 
teacher who undertakes to use illustrations of this 
third type. The temptation is to use them too read- 
ily, without first seeking illustrations that are more 
exact. i\n analogy is always more or less loose ; the 
likeness holds in certain respects only, and no one 
expects it to hold in all respects. If the degree of 
unlikeness associated with the likeness is so great 
as to involve a risk of misleading, one may always 
offset it by another analogy. Illustrations of this 
kind are, therefore, the easy recourse of a teacher 
whose own knowledge is inexact and precarious. He 
cannot map out, diagram, picture, or model what 
he does not know precisely, and he is not sufficiently 
sure of his ground to set forth any particular cases 
or instances which exemplify the truth which he 
propounds ; so he expresses his hazy ideas by telling 
in a number of ways what that truth is like. This 
is not to condemn analogical illustrations. There 
are some truths that can hardly be taught in any 



ILLUSTRATING THE LESSON 147 

other way; and one of the supreme tests of a good 
teacher is his ability to make apt and effective use 
of the principle of analogy. But the point is that 
many a poor teacher is content with analogies who 
ought to push on to larger knowledge which would 
enable him to use more exact illustrations. 

If the teacher uses analogies, he should be sure 
that they really illustrate and illumine the lesson and 
that they help the pupil both to attend to and to un- 
derstand the point that is to be taught. The illustra- 
tion should be more familiar than the truth it is 
meant to convey. It should lie within the experi- 
ence of the pupils and be suited to their comprehen- 
sion. Its elements of likeness to the truth should 
outweigh its elements of unlikeness. It should not 
be so suggestive as to attract attention to itself 
rather than to shed light upon the lesson. 

For example, to compare the work of the Holy 
Spirit through the means of grace to the distribu- 
tion of gas from a central tank by means of a sys- 
tem of pipes is to use an illustration too incongruous 
to be helpful. It is quite as bad to extend Paul's 
figure of the one body of which we are all members 
and to tell little children that they are that body's 
finger nails; yet that has been done. Even the beau- 
tiful and appropriate simile of the Good Shepherd 
may not be understood by the children who are too 
young or of too wholly urban an experience. "I'm 
not a sheep. I ain't got no wool," is the recorded 
reaction of a cockney youngster. 

If objects are used in illustration, one must be par- 
ticularly careful to abide by the rules just given. In- 



148 TALKS TO SUNDAY SCHOOL TEACHERS 

deed, one is safer never to use objects whose rela- 
tion to the truth is merely analogical or figurative. 
The physical presence of the object is apt to make 
the illustration itself so stand out that the point to 
be illustrated is neither attended to nor remembered. 



FOR INVESTIGATION AND DISCUSSION 

1. If possible, try on a group of persons the experiment 
on the value of a map, which is described in this chapter. 

2. Give examples of lessons illustrated by each of the 
three kinds of illustrations here described. 

3. Discuss the value of maps and pictures; and prin- 
ciples for the use of the blackboard. 

4. Give further examples of Jesus' use of the method 
of illustration by citing cases which exemplify the principle 
he sought to teach. 

5. What are some of the pitfalls of analogical illus- 
trations ? 

6. Discuss the advantages and disadvantages, the values 
and dangers, of object teaching. 

FOR FURTHER READING 

Valentine's book is named in the text. Books on Jesus' 
methods of teaching have been listed in connection with 
Chapter XV. Besides Dubois' "The Point of Contact in 
Teaching" read J. Adams: "Exposition and Illustration in 
Teaching"; W. L. Hervey: "Picture Work." The ex- 
amples of poor analogies cited in the text have been taken 
from the excellent discussion of this subject in Penstone: 
"The Teacher's Craft." 



CHAPTER XX 
THE DRAMATIC METHOD OF TEACHING 

CHILDREN at play are naturally dramatic. 
They are seldom content just to see or hear 
or read about things and events ; their impulse is to 
act these out. "Let's play horse"; "Let's play 
school"; "Let's play Indian"; "Ding dong, all 
aboard, toot, toot!" — these and their like are fa- 
miliar phrases to any one who knows children. 

"There is nothing," says Kirkpatrick, "from the 
noises and movements of a locomotive to the silent 
art of Jack Frost, or from making a pie to con- 
structing a church, from burglary to a fashionable 
tea party, that the child cannot imitate by the use 
of make-believe objects and symbolic movements. 
The essentials of every process and action in the 
heavens above and the earth beneath, of which the 
child sees or hears, are made familiar to him in his 
dramatic imitations." Our neighborhood was over- 
run with "armjes" while America was at war. One 
day in late April of 19 19 I stumbled on something 
new. The children, who had been playing on the 
lawn a few minutes before, had disappeared. In 
answer to my call, the head of a seven-year-old was 
poked out of the window of an empty garage next 
door. "Please, daddy, mayn't we stay out a little 

149 



150 TALKS TO SUNDAY SCHOOL TEACHERS 

longer? We want to attend the peace conference 
Oscar is holding in here." 

The dramatic impulse manifests itself early. Most 
children begin at about two years of age to make 
such announcements as "I'm a kitty," "I'm a dog- 
gie," "I'm a moo cow," and to act out the part as 
best they can, expecting others, too, to enter into 
their play. It persists indefinitely; grown-ups who 
have no make-believe left in them are to be pitied. 
It is strongest throughout childhood, of course, up 
to the teens; and it is at its climax from four to 
seven. In these years the child's dramatic play fills 
so large a part of his life that it is hard sometimes 
to draw the line between what is real to him and 
what he knows to be make-believe. I found a five- 
year-old a few days ago returning home from kin- 
dergarten by a circuitous and inconvenient route, 
across lots and through fences. "Why don't you 
go home by the sidewalk?" I asked. "But, you see, 
there is an army against me there." 

Teachers in the public schools have lately begun 
to understand what an effective educational instru- 
ment the natural impulse of children to dramatic 
play may be, if afforded proper material and op- 
portunity for expression. Children are far more in- 
terested, as a rule, in acting out a story that has 
been told them than in merely retelling it or writing 
it or illustrating it by drawing. And they get more 
out of the story which they reproduce in this dra- 
matic way. It becomes more real to them, and they 
understand it better, because they have lived it over 



THE DRAMATIC METHOD 151 

again from the inside, so to speak, and have in a 
measure entered into and shared the motives and 
experiences of the persons whose characters they 
have assumed. In the teaching of oral reading, 
composition, literature, history, and geography, dra- 
matic methods are most directly usable and have 
proved especially successful. A suggestive account 
of how one school utilized this impulse in practi- 
cally the whole of its work is given in Harriet Fin- 
lay-Johnson's book on "The Dramatic Method of 
Teaching." 

Fortunately, we now have an even more con- 
crete and convincing account of the use of dramatic 
methods in the religious education of children. For 
five years past, at the Hyde Park Church of Dis- 
ciples in Chicago, Miss Elizabeth E. Miller has con- 
ducted a dramatic club of children from six to four- 
teen years of age, who meet for one hour each Sun- 
day afternoon to dramatize and act out stories from 
the Bible. In her book, entitled "The Dramatiza- 
tion of Bible Stories," Miss Miller presents a record 
of her work with these children, with a detailed 
description of her methods, and the text of their 
dramatizations of the stories of Joseph, David and 
Goliath, Moses in the Bulrushes, Ruth, Esther, 
Abraham and the Three Guests, Daniel in the Lions' 
Den, the Wise and Foolish Virgins, the Great Sup- 
per, the Good Samaritan, and the Prodigal Son, 
besides suggestive analyses of a number of other 
stories. The book is clear, straightforward, and 
practical. Both Miss Miller's work and her account 



152 TALKS TO SUNDAY SCHOOL TEACHERS 

constitute a most important contribution to educa- 
tional method. 

The fundamental point which one must keep clear 
is that such dramatic work is for sake of the educa- 
tion of the children who take part in it, not for sake 
of the play itself as a finished artistic product or for 
the enjoyment of parents or other spectators who 
may from time to time be invited to witness its per- 
formance. Most of the work, indeed, is done with- 
out reference to possible public performance. It is 
play m the true sense — the naturally dramatic play 
of children — organized, supervised, and guided by 
an educative purpose, yet remaining play. 

The children do more, then, than simply memo* 
rize and stage a dialogue which is furnished to them 
ready-made. There is little that is educative about 
amateur theatricals of the common sort. The es- 
sence of the dramatic method of teaching, on the 
contrary, lies in the fact that the children make the 
play themselves. They are the authors, as well 
as the actors, of the little drama. The number and 
form of the acts and scenes, the words of the dia- 
logue, and the character of the accompanying action, 
take shape slowly as a result of the cooperative ef- 
fort of the children themselves, as one after an- 
other, in spontaneous play, offers his own interpre- 
tation of this or that part, subject to the criticism 
of the group as a whole. 

The first step, of course, is for the teacher to 
tell the story simply, directly, with dramatic unity 
and movement, emphasizing essentials, using direct 



THE DRAMATIC METHOD 153 

discourse, and aiming to develop within the children 
vivid mental pictures of its outstanding events. 1 

The next step is to talk the story over with the 
children, and to have them determine the general 
plan which they will follow in playing it, by dividing 
it into the most important pictures or scenes. 

Then comes the playing. After a brief discus- 
sion of what should take place in the first scene, 
some of the children are asked to act it out, which 
they do, using their own words and following their 
own ideas as to appropriate details of action. The 
teacher then, to quote Miss Miller, "raises such 
questions as ' Which parts did these children do best?' 
'Why?' Where can they improve it?' 'What 
would you do to make the part better?' 'What do 
you think should have been said here?' This leads 
to constructive criticism of the scene by the children 
themselves rather than by the leader in charge. Each 
child is eager to offer suggestions at this point and 
is anxious for an opportunity to give his own inter- 
pretation of the part by acting it out." The scene is 
acted again, with different children for some or all 
parts, whose interpretation is in turn subjected to the 
criticism of the group. 

Each scene is worked out in a similar way, and 
the story as a whole is played through many times. 
The teacher sees to it that every child has a chance 

1 Teachers who wish help on this point can do no better than to 
follow the counsels of Sara Cone Bryant's book on "How to Tell 
Stories to Children." This contains a brief description, too, of the 
schoolroom dramatization of stories. A collection of stories, 
adapted for telling with this end in view, which may serve as 
examples of such adaptation, is to be found in Ada R. Skinner's 
"Dramatic Stories to Read and Tell." 



154 TALKS TO SUNDAY SCHOOL TEACHERS 

to try out many parts and become familiar with all. 
There is continual discussion, reworking, and change, 
until the play has been reduced to the essential scenes 
and the children recognize it to be the result of their 
best effort. 

Usually the process stops at this point. The story 
has been mastered, and the children are ready to 
take up another. Sometimes, however, it will seem 
best to go further; to give to the play a finished 
form and to offer a final presentation to which par- 
ents or friends may be invited. In this case the 
children will work out the wording carefully, using 
the biblical language so far as possible. And they 
will choose those who are to take part in the final 
presentation, on the basis of their success in the 
several characters. 

The high educative value of such a method of 
teaching to children the great stories of the Bible 
is obvious. At the end the children possess the story 
in so vital a way that they will never forget it. They 
have in imagination lived through its events and 
shared its experiences; and their conception of these 
has been corrected and deepened by repeated group 
criticism and discussion. Incidentally, such coop- 
eration as the method involves is excellent social 
training; the children are developed in power of ex- 
pression, and they are given a motive for the memo- 
rization of some of the great passages of the Bible. 

Stage settings, properties, and costumes should 
be of the simplest character. This is imaginative 
play, and its spirit is best conserved if much be left 
to the imagination. Such properties and costumes as 



THE DRAMATIC METHOD 155 

are used should not be reserved for a final perform- 
ance, but used at each practice. We must not for- 
get that the real work of education is done, not at 
the final performance, but in the repeated playing 
the story, with the attendant discussions. Such prop- 
erties and costumes, moreover, should be made by 
the children themselves. All the educative values of 
constructive hand-work may thus be added to those 
of the dramatic method of teaching. 



FOR INVESTIGATION AND DISCUSSION 

:. Describe the development of dramatic play in chil- 
dren. 

2. Describe the use of dramatic play as an educational 
method in the schools. 

3. Make clear the difference between the use of drama- _ 
tization as an educational method and the staging of a 
play for public performance. 

4. What are some of the possible dangers and necessary 
limitations of the dramatic method of teaching in the Sun- 
day school? 

5. What principles should be followed in the prepara- 
tion of stories to tell to children, with a view to their 
serving as a basis for dramatization? 

FOR FURTHER READING 
The best books have been named in the text. 



CHAPTER XXI 
THE PURPOSES OF QUESTIONING 

ONE of the outstanding differences, in present 
practice, between the public school and the 
Sunday school is that most public school teachers ask 
too many questions and most Sunday school teachers 
do not ask questions enough. For the first half of 
this statement there is ample evidence in the careful 
study by Miss Romiett Stevens on "The Question as 
a Measure of Efficiency in Instruction." Miss 
Stevens secured complete stenographic reports of 
twenty high school lessons in English, history, sci- 
ence, Latin, modern languages, and mathematics; 
she observed one hundred more such lessons chosen 
at random, with a view to counting and noting the 
number and nature of the questions asked in each; 
and she followed each of ten classes through an en- 
tire day's work for the purpose of studying the 
aggregate question-stimulus to which each was sub- 
jected in the course of the day. 

The results of her study are surprising. In only 
eight of the twenty lessons completely reported the 
teacher asked less than ninety questions in the period 
of forty-five minutes, the average being sixty-eight. 
In each of the remaining twelve lessons more than 
ninety questions were asked in the same period of 

156 



THE PURPOSES OF QUESTIONING 157 

time, the average being 128. A freshman class in 
high school, in a day's work of five periods of forty 
minutes each, not counting gymnasium, was sub- 
jected to 516 questions and expected to return 516 
answers, which is at the rate of 2.58 questions and 
2.58 answers per minute. The lowest number of 
questions recorded in a day's work for a class was 
321, and the average number 395. 

Such rapid-fire questioning, Miss Stevens rightly 
holds, defeats its own ends. It maintains a ner- 
vous tension in the classroom that must in the long 
run be injurious. More than that, it is a symptom 
of the fact that the real work of the hour is being 
done by the teacher, and that the pupil's share is 
reduced simply to brief, punctuation-like answers to 
the teacher's questions. Such questions appeal to 
mere memory or to superficial judgment rather 
than to real thought; they cultivate in the pupil 
neither independent judgment nor the power of ex- 
pression; they ignore individual needs and discour- 
age initiative; they make out of the classroom a 
place to display knowledge, rather than a laboratory 
in which to acquire it. 

The second half of the proposition, that most Sun- 
day school teachers do not ask questions enough, has 
not been established by any such investigation as 
that of Miss Stevens. A similar study, on the basis 
of complete stenographic reports, of typical Sunday 
school lessons, would be a most valuable addition 
to our resources in the field of religious pedagogy. 
Till such a study is made, one must simply record 
his conviction that Sunday school teachers, as a gen- 



158 TALKS TO SUNDAY SCHOOL TEACHERS 

eral rule, ask too few, rather than too many, ques- 
tions. This conviction is based upon general ob- 
servation and upon the frequency of such remarks 
as: "I just can't get my class to study," "There are 
only two or three who ever answer my questions," 
"My pupils don't know anything about the Bible," 
"As long as I do all the talking, things go all right," 
etc. 

Both the overquestioning of the public-school 
teacher and the underquestioning of the Sunday 
school teacher have a common root in a misconcep- 
tion of the function of the recitation. The mistake 
is to sunder study from recitation too sharply; td 
assume that the pupil's real growth in knowledge 
should take place away from the classroom and that 
the function of the recitation is simply to test 
whether or not he did the study assigned. Under 
the influence of this idea, and backed by the power 
to compel study which the sanction of the public 
school system affords, the teacher in these schools 
adopts the quick, high-pressure method of question- 
ing which seeks to catch the pupil napping and to 
explore to the last detail his mastery of the text- 
book. The Sunday school teacher, under the in- 
fluence of the same idea, but discouraged by his 
lack of power to compel study, is prone to give up 
the recitation method, to quit asking questions that 
presuppose study on the part of the pupil, and to 
adopt a so-called discussion method which all too 
often results in his doing all of the talking, as well 
as all of the work. 

Leaders in public education, however, have come 



THE PURPOSES OF QUESTIONING 159 

to see how mistaken is this conception of the func- 
tion of the recitation. It is absurd, when one stops 
to think of it, to expect the real work of education 
to be done while the pupil is separated from the 
teacher, in study that is undirected and unsupervised, 
and to give over the precious moments when teacher 
and pupil are together to a merely mechanical test- 
ing of the results of that study. 

Study and recitation should be parts, rather, of 
one organic whole. The teacher should be a present 
leader and helper, rather than a taskmaster who 
periodically returns to demand the tale of bricks 
wrought without straw in his absence. It is his 
function to inspire, direct, and guide the pupil's 
work. Education is a cooperative undertaking. It 
is a quest for knowledge and power, in which the 
teacher leads the way, and in which he enlists the 
interest and effort of his pupils. 

In our best public schools, therefore, a movement 
is growing toward supervised study. The term 
means that the emphasis in teaching is shifted from 
merely hearing a lesson to directing the pupil's study 
of the lesson. That shift of emphasis involves many 
changes. The teacher becomes a director of study, 
working with the pupil, rather than for him. The 
class period is lengthened — in many schools doubled, 
with a brief intermission — and at least one-half of 
the time is devoted to study under the direction of 
the teacher, the other half being divided between 
assignment and recitation. The assignment of the 
lesson assumes a place of fundamental importance. 
Pupils are shown how to study, are given specific 



160 TALKS TO SUNDAY SCHOOL TEACHERS 

questions or problems in connection with each unit 
of recitation, and are supervised as they undertake 
to apply the principles of correct studying to these 
problems. They are afforded a degree of individual 
attention not possible under the old system of mass 
recitation; and those who go at a new lesson 
wrongly are checked and guided aright. Undi- 
rected study at home is eliminated or reduced to a 
minimum; and high-pressure methods of recitation 
are done away with. 

Schools will differ, of course, in the degree to 
which they will undertake to supervise the study of 
their pupils, and in the extent to which they will re- 
organize their teaching methods and schedules to 
this end. But the principle of supervised study is 
sound and true. And in its light we are prepared 
to understand the purposes of questioning in the 
teaching process. When teacher and pupil are work- 
ing together with a definite end in view, it is natural 
that each should ask questions of the other. 

The teacher's purposes in asking questions of the 
pupil are of three chief sorts : 

I. That he may learn the pupil's present situa- 
tion, problem, or predicament. If the teacher is to 
help a pupil to gain further knowledge or skill, he 
must understand what the pupil now knows, has done 
and feels able to do, what difficulties he faces, and 
how he proposes to get to work. The teacher will 
learn this in part by frankly questioning his pupil, 
not so much by way of formal test, as because both 
recognize that the teacher must know these things if 
he is to be of any real help to the pupil. 



THE PURPOSES OF QUESTIONING 161 

2. That he may inspire and direct the pupil's ac- 
tivity. It is by questions that the teacher wakes the 
pupil to realize what he does not as yet know, and 
stirs him to want further knowledge and skill; faces 
him with problems, rouses him to think for himself, 
and directs his awakened mind into profitable chan- 
nels of study and action; leads him to compare, an- 
alyze, discriminate, and associate facts, to draw in- 
ferences and make generalizations. This is by far 
the most fundamental purpose of questioning. Di- 
rected to such ends, the question is the most effec- 
tive of all educational instruments. Yet how often 
we find questions of this type set apart as "thought- 
questions" from what are denominated "fact-ques- 
tions," with the implication that they are of an es- 
pecially rare and difficult sort. The truth is that 
comparatively few of the questions of a skillful 
teacher deal with mere facts. He lays all empha- 
sis upon questions of the thought-provoking and 
thought-directing sort, which appeal to judgment and 
reasoning power rather than to mere memory, 
awaken interest and initiative and set pupils to work. 
The more important of these questions he prepares 
carefully beforehand; they constitute the very cen- 
ter and substance of his lesson plan. 

3. That he may detain the pupil's mind upon cer- 
tain things which must be learned by repetition in 
attention, or which must be approache'd from many 
angles to be fully understood. Some matters, both 
of knowledge and of skill, must be drilled upon. 
And in the drill of the schoolroom, unlike that of 



162 TALKS TO SUNDAY SCHOOL TEACHERS 

the parade-ground, questions are more effective than 
commands. 

The pupil's purpose in asking questions of the 
teacher is to gain direction and help. The wise 
teacher welcomes these questions as indications of 
the pupil's awakened initiative and cooperation. He 
can have no better assurance of the success of his 
teaching than to have his pupils ask many questions, 
provided these be worth the asking. 

More and better questions should be asked in our 
Sunday school classes. Some Sunday school teach- 
ers fail at this point, be it granted, because they do 
not know enough about the lesson to ask any other 
than the most obvious fact-questions. But more fail 
because of the uncertainty caused by their holding 
fast to the old idea that all questioning must be of 
the recitation type, which presupposes and tests the 
results of previous study at home, while they are at 
the same time unable to secure such study in any 
consistent way. Such teachers might well try out the 
"Supervised Study" plan. Whether or not they 
would permanently reorganize their class work upon 
this basis, it would mean much if they would learn 
to ask questions of the type which this plan enjoins. 



FOR INVESTIGATION AND DISCUSSION 

i. Discuss the limitations and possible bad results of 
such over-questioning as Miss Stevens describes. 

2. Observe a few typical Sunday school classes, noting 
down carefully the number and character of the ques- 
tions asked and the answers returned. 



THE PURPOSES OF QUESTIONING 163 

3. Show how the principle of supervised study revises 
our ideas concerning class-room methods of teaching. 

4. Show how this principle makes questioning a natural 
element in the cooperation of teacher and pupil. What, 
in light of this principle, are the teacher's purposes in ask- 
ing questions? What are the pupil's purposes? 

5. Discuss the principles which underlie effective ques- 
tioning. 

FOR FURTHER READING 

Romiett Stevens: "The Question as a Measure of Ef- 
ficiency in Instruction"; J. G. Fitch: "The Art of Ques- 
tioning"; G. H. Betts: "The Recitation"; H. H. Horne: 
"Story-telling, Questioning, and Studying"; F. M. Mc- 
Murry: "How to Study and Teaching How to Study"; A. 
L. Hall-Quest: "Supervised Study." 



CHAPTER XXII 
WHY EXAMINATIONS? 

WELL, professor, I beat you to it," ex- 
claimed a college sophomore as he handed 
in his paper at the close of a term examination. 
"What do you mean?" asked the teacher. "You 
asked just the questions that I expected and prepared 
for," was the answer. "I out-guessed you this time." 
"No, you did not," returned the professor, "for I 
was not trying to out-guess you. If your judgment 
as to the proper content of this examination coin- 
cided with mine, I am very happy. It is good evi- 
dence that we succeeded this term, I in teaching and 
you in getting the main points of the course." 

An examination ought not to be a battle of wits, 
with the teacher trying to trip his pupils or catch 
them lacking some detail of knowledge, while they,^ 
on the other hand, seek to elude or outwit him. It 
ought rather to be the climax of the course, the nat- 
ural conclusion to which the teaching of the pre- 
vious weeks looked forward. 

i. The chief reason for giving an examination at 
the close of a course of lessons upon any subject 
that constitutes a unit of instruction, is to impel the 
pupil to go back over the material that he has stud- 
ied day by day, to view its various parts in light of 

164 



WHY EXAMINATIONS? 165 

the whole, to sum it all up in right relation and to 
organize it into a coherent system of ideas that 
will be permanent and usable. It is a mistake, there- 
fore, to excuse from the final examination all the 
better students, as some schools and colleges do. It 
is just these better students who should have the ex- 
aminations, because they can profit most from it. 
It matters little, perhaps, whether pupils of medi- 
ocre ability ever attempt to gather up the impres- 
sions gained in the course; but it is important that 
those who are competent should press on to that 
final, systematic comprehension of its material to 
which the examination impels them. 

2. Incidentally, the examination is a test of the 
pupil's mastery of the course and of the ability there- 
with developed in him. It must be a fair test, more- 
over, if it is to fulfill its primary function as a mo- 
tive to final review and organization. 

This means that the questions should appeal to 
the pupil's understanding rather than to mere mem- 
ory, and that they should deal with important as- 
pects of the material covered. The examination 
itself must exhibit that perspective which is the goal 
of the work of the course. In this sense it is true 
that the better pupils will always be able, in some 
measure, to anticipate the matters concerning which 
questions will be asked in examination. Good ex- 
amination questions deal with aspects of the course 
that are fairly obvious, because big, outstanding and 
important. 

This is not to say, however, that the questions 
themselves should be so big as to be vague and in- 



166 TALKS TO SUNDAY SCHOOL TEACHERS 

definite or to lend themselves to interminable an- 
swers. "I could have written all day on the first 
question," was the complaint of a conscientious stu- 
dent after a certain examination. Examination ques- 
tions should be clear, definite and capable of rea- 
sonably complete answer within the time allotted. 
They should deal with big things, but in a precise 
enough way. Often an examination question may 
best reach its end by indirection. It will relate to 
some particular situation or application of the truth, 
and will be capable of a brief, direct answer; but 
that answer will reveal whether or not the pupil 
has mastered the larger truth and gained the broad- 
er perspective which the question. presupposes. 

The examination is not the sole test of the pupil's 
mastery of the course or of the ability that he has 
developed in connection with it. Some pupils are 
constitutionally unable to pull themselves together 
and to do their best in examination. Aside from 
this fact, experience has brought teachers more and 
more to feel that the whole of a pupil's work should 
be given full weight and value in the attempt to 
measure his attainment, and that promotion should 
be based not simply upon the final examination, but 
also upon his daily record for attendance, recitation 
and laboratory work, and upon the character of his 
notebook, themes, constructions, or other products 
of his activity in connection with the course. 

3. It should be noted, however, that this daily 
record is apt to be better if the pupil knows that at 
the end is to come the test of an examination. This 
is the third function of examinations. They serve 



WHY EXAMINATIONS? 167 

as a stimulus to more faithful and thorough work 
throughout the term. Many colleges and secondary 
schools have at some time or other had to meet a 
petition from the members of the senior class to be 
excused from final examinations for the last term 
of their course, provided they made a passing grade 
in their daily work, on the plea that they were so 
occupied at that time with preparation for the ac- 
tivities of commencement week. Most faculties who 
have granted this petition have been sorry, for it 
has generally resulted in spoiling the work of the last 
term of senior year. Emancipated from the thought 
of a final reckoning in these courses, the seniors have 
"loafed on the job," and even good students have 
been content to do little more than a passing grade 
of work. 

4. Examinations constitute, finally, a test of the 
teacher. When a pupil fails, it means that, in this 
case, the teacher has failed as well. And a teacher 
who finds that any considerable proportion of his 
pupils are unable to pass creditably a fair examina- 
tion may well question whether his own work is up 
to the standard. A careful study of their failures 
will often reveal to him the weaknesses of his own 
teaching. He may find it helpful to submit both 
his list of examination questions and his pupils' pa- 
pers to his principal or to some other teacher, for 
criticism and suggestion. 

All of these reasons for giving examinations ap- 
ply to the work of the Sunday school, as well as to 
that of public school and college. It may be granted 
that the examination tests and stimulates only the in- 



168 TALKS TO SUNDAY SCHOOL TEACHERS 

tellectual side of the pupil's work, and that intel- 
lectual attainment is not the whole, or even the pri- 
mary, aim of the Sunday school teacher. But it is 
just upon this intellectual side that many Sunday 
schools are wofully lacking; and a system of exami- 
nations, properly conceived and administered, may 
do much to lift the work of such schools to a higher 
level. 

There are reasons, indeed, why the Sunday school 
has even greater need of a system of examinations 
than the public school. The latter has ways of en- 
forcing more thorough work from day to day which 
are not open to the Sunday school. Moreover, it 
has more time at its disposal, its curriculum is bet- 
ter standardized, its teachers better trained, and its 
methods have been more thoroughly worked out 
through long experience. Besides all this, there is a 
practical urgency about the education which the pub- 
lic school offers, both in knowledge and skill, which 
most pupils are slow to feel in connection with the 
spiritual truths of religion. For all of these rea- 
sons it is conceivable that the public school might, 
more easily than the Sunday school, dispense with 
examinations, yet maintain a high standard of work. 

It is for the sake of their educational value that 
the Sunday school should institute a system of ex- 
aminations, not as a bit of machinery upon which to 
base the promotion of pupils. We have seen that 
the better public schools do not base the pupil's pro- 
motion solely upon his ability to pass an examina- 
tion. And one may question whether the Sunday 
school, in view of the differences between itself and 



WHY EXAMINATIONS? 169 

the public school, ought to base promotion upon ex- 
aminations at all. It is of far more consequence 
that the Sunday school hold its pupils than that it 
"flunk" out those who do not take or pass its exami- 
nations; and it is best that all of its pupils should 
advance to higher grades of work, year after year, 
as they are promoted in the public schools and ac- 
quire new interests and capabilities. 

The examinations, therefore, should be optional. 
Pupils need not take them if unwilling to do so; 
but all should be encouraged to take them, and every 
effort should be expended to build up within the 
school a body of public opinion that will sustain 
them and enlist the interest and cooperation of the 
pupils. This is not so impossible as it may seem at 
first thought. British and Canadian universities have 
long drawn a distinction between those students who 
are content merely to "pass" in their work and those 
who go in for "honors." Many of the better Amer- 
ican schools and colleges are adopting like plans 
with excellent success. Something of this sort may 
well be done by the Sunday school. Those of its 
pupils who pass creditable examinations may be pro- 
moted with honor, as distinguished from those who 
merely go on to the next year's work. 

Concrete suggestions as to methods of conducting 
such examinations may be found in the unit on "The 
Teacher" in the newer teacher-training courses of 
the several denominations. It may be added here 
simply that the questions of the examination, how- 
ever conducted, should appeal to understanding and 
judgment rather than to mere memory; that pupils 



170 TALKS TO SUNDAY SCHOOL TEACHERS 

may well be permitted to take questions home with 
them for answer, if that seems wise, and be put upon 
their honor to do their own work without asking 
help from other persons; and that it is more im- 
portant to get them to do the work which the ex- 
amination requires than to test whether or not they 
carry under their hats, stored in memory, all the de- 
tailed facts with which the course has dealt. 

Most schools, which plan to institute a system of 
examinations, would do well to appoint a well-quali- 
fied examining board, or a supervisor of examina- 
tions, to plan carefully, in counsel with the teachers, 
the methods suited to the different grades, and to see 
to it that the examinations are administered in such 
a way as to be of the highest educational value. 



FOR INVESTIGATION AND DISCUSSION 

i. Discuss the reasons set forth in this chapter for giving 
examinations. Could these ends be better attained in some 
other way? If so, in what way? 

2. Why has the Sunday school even more need of a 
system of examinations than the public school ? 

3. What ought to be the relation of the examination to 
promotion, in the several grades? 

4. Describe some practical methods of giving examina- 
tions in the Sunday school. 

5. Why is it best to have an examining board or a di- 
rector of religious education charged with the duty of super- 
vising examinations, instead of leaving the matter entirely 
to the several teachers? 



WHY EXAMINATIONS? 171 

FOR FURTHER READING 

W. C. Bagley, in "The Educative Process"; G. I>. 
Strayer, in "The Teaching Process"; and H. H. Horne, 
in "Story-telling, Questioning and Studying," present the 
theory of examinations in the public schools. An article 
in the "Encyclopaedia of Sunday Schools and Religious Edu- 
cation" deals with examinations in the Sunday school. 
There is a good brief discussion in Burton and Mathews' 
"Principles and Ideals for the Sunday School." 



CHAPTER XXIII 
APPLYING THE LESSON 

LESSONS are of three sorts, depending upon the 
aim in view: (i) Practice or drill lessons, 
which seek to establish a habit, as of skill or of mem- 
ory; (2) Thinking or problem lessons , which lead 
pupils to observe facts, discriminate elements, seek 
causes, apprehend relations, draw conclusions, verify 
hypotheses, and do whatever else may be needful 
in order that they may arrive at adequate ideas and 
true convictions in any given field of knowledge; (3) 
Lessons in appreciation, which undertake so to pre- 
sent to pupils the ideal aspects of nature and human 
life, literature and art as to lead them not simply 
to know, but to feel and appreciate the things of 
real worth. 

No lesson is complete until the pupil can apply it. 
Drill has not been adequate until the pupil can use, 
readily and efficiently, the habit of skill it is meant 
to impart. No principle, formula, idea or other bit 
of knowledge is fully grasped until the pupil can see 
its bearing upon new situations, other than those 
from which he acquired it, and is able to use it in 
the solution of new problems. No great human 
deed, no piece of literature or of art is really ap- 
preciated that does not make the pupil eager to ex- 

172 



APPLYING THE LESSON 173 

perience it or its like again. In all of these fields, 
then, the lesson is applied when the pupil is able, 
because of what he has learned in it, to bring added 
power to bear upon new situations. 

At Lake Chautauqua, on one Sunday of last sum- 
mer, the sermon to the children was on "The Bram- 
ble-bush King," drawn from Jotham's parable 
(Judges 9:7-15) of the bramble that was chosen 
king by the trees, and forthwith commanded that 
every tree should be burned that was not little 
enough to crawl under its shade. Ways were point- 
ed out in which boys and girls, as well as older folk, 
may be like the little, envious, prickly bramble, when 
they insist upon having their own way, want to lord 
it over others, cannot stand it to have anybody 
around that is bigger or brighter or more popular 
than they, and so on. 

That afternoon, while the rest of the family took 
an after-dinner siesta, a seven-year-old boy, of his 
own initiative and without help, wrote what fol- 
lows. It is reproduced just as he wrote it, though 
capitals and punctuation are uncertain, and the spell- 
ing is here and there oddly phonetic, for he had just 
completed his first year at school. 

"One time long long ago all of the trees said we 
must have a king to rool over us. First thay asked 
the olivetree if she wood be king and rule over us 
but the olive-tree said shood I stop makeing olives 
for pepul to eat, and just stand around doing noth- 
ing, no i shall not be king. Next thay asked the pare- 
tree if he wood be king, but the pare tree said shood 
I stop makeing pares for children to eat. no i shall 



174 TALKS TO SUNDAY SCHOOL TEACHERS 

not be king. Next thay went to the plum-tree and 
said will you be king, the plum-tree said shood i 
stop makeing plums for children to eat. no i shall 
not be king, next thay went to the hegg will you be 
king and the hegg said yes i will be king if you 
promise to do just as i tell you. we promis to do just 
as you say said all the trees together all right i shall 
be king then, the first command was that every tree 
shood come under my shade, and just think of the 
statele elm and maypel tree and all the other big 
trees and the hegg said if they cood not he wood 
burn tham with fire." 

This boy was applying the sermon of the morn- 
ing. His reproduction of the story involved, in 
some degree, all three of the types of application 
defined above. 

Most obviously, his attitude was one of appre- 
ciation. He had enjoyed the story so much that he 
wanted to keep it, so set it down on paper. This 
same boy, some months before, had been deeply 
moved by his mother's reading of Ernest Seton's 
"Biography of a Grizzly," which a neighbor lad had 
loaned him. On the day after the reading was fin- 
ished he stayed at his desk, busily occupied in writ- 
ing. When his mother was impelled by the unusual 
quiet to inquire what he was doing, he showed her 
a bundle of sheets upon which he had begun to 
transcribe the book. "Daddy said he couldn't buy 
it for me now," he explained, "and I want ft so badly 
that I am just going to copy it all." 

The form that his appreciation took in both these 
cases, again, was determined by his ability to ap- 



APPLYING THE LESSON 175 

ply a set of habits acquired in public school, where 
he was learning to read and write. This is the boy 
who, a few months after entering public school, 
asked to be excused from going to Sunday school on 
the ground that "you don't learn anything there." 
Perhaps if the Sunday school had been wise enough 
to give him an opportunity to apply to its material 
the new habits and skills which he was acquiring in 
the public school, his parents would not have had 
to face that problem. It is unfortunate that many 
Sunday schools yet feel that they can handle the 
pupils of the Primary Department all together, put- 
ting six-, seven- and eight-year-old children into the 
same group and teaching them by the same methods. 
Nowhere does one year make a greater difference 
than between the six-year-old child, who is just en- 
tering school and cannot yet read or write, and the 
seven-year-old, who has had a year's experience in 
school and has acquired these abilities. In no de- 
partment is it more important that the children be 
divided into carefully graded groups, and taught in 
ways that keep pace with their growing knowledge 
and enlist their newly-acquired skills. 

The boy's written story shows, finally, that he had 
begun to apply and assimilate the ideas of the par- 
able in terms of his own experience. The differ- 
ences between Jotham's story, which had been fol- 
lowed in the sermon of the morning, and the boy's 
reproduction of it, are significant. The vine and the 
fig tree have dropped out of his mind, and are re- 
placed by the pear and plum trees, about which he 
knows more. These, moreover, give as their rea- 



176 TALKS TO SUNDAY SCHOOL TEACHERS 

sons for declining the doubtful honor, the fact that 
they are busy making pears and plums for children 
to eat. The bramble of the original story has be- 
come a "hegg" (hedge), which is natural enough 
when one considers that the lawn of this boy's home 
is fenced by a barberry hedge. The olive tree re- 
mains, for olives are dainties which he highly prizes ; 
but the cedars of Lebanon, which were the special 
objects of the bramble's envy, have changed into 
"the statele elm and maypel tree." 

But what about the practical application of the 
story? To write is well; but to do is better. Will 
this boy apply to his own character and conduct the 
parable of the bramble? Has he acquired added 
power of moral judgment and self-control? Unless 
that application be made, Jotham's story will remain 
a mere tale, and the preacher of the morning will 
have failed. 

These are difficult questions to answer. It was 
Robert Louis Stevenson, I think, who said that the 
hardest thing about the work of the teacher was 
that you had to keep on chopping and chopping, 
and you never saw any chips fly. Our work is in- 
ward and at long range, and its full results are never 
immediately obvious. 

It is interesting that the boy's version draws no 
moral, though the preacher had presented some di- 
rect practical applications. But we may not con- 
clude that the boy had failed to get these, or that 
he could make none of his own. He simply tells his 
story in good climactic fashion, then stops. He 
reveals the fine sense for a good story, which is 



APPLYING THE LESSON 177 

natural to children, and something of the uncon- 
scious art of a good story-teller. 

This boy has gained a principle in light of which 
he may face his own problems. His evident appre- 
ciation of the story, its clear grip upon his imagina- 
tion, his reworking and restating it in terms of his 
established habits and experiences, augur well for 
his permanent possession of the idea it embodies. 
But he must go further if it is to be of full value to 
his life. He must practice the application of this 
principle to his own conduct. 

In such practice of the principles of life the Sun- 
day school teacher may lead and guide his pupils. 
The demand is justly made of the Sunday school in 
these days that it maintain a higher level of intel- 
lectual efficiency in its teaching. But with that there 
is a demand for greater practical efficiency as well. 

We may strive for this in two chief directions : 

I. By a more definite correlation of effort with 
the parents of our pupils. It meant a good deal that 
the mother of the boy quoted should have been able 
to report to the preacher that she had helped her 
son in a selfish moment by reminding him of the 
bramble. One of the losses sustained in passing 
from Uniform to Graded Lessons is at this point of 
contact with parents. Graded Sunday schools must 
develop plans whereby the intelligent and sympa- 
thetic cooperation of teachers and parents may be 
secured and maintained. Parents 1 classes, weekly 
letters to parents, short courses for parents cover- 
ing in a few weeks the material to be studied by 



178 TALKS TO SUNDAY SCHOOL TEACHERS 

their children throughout the year and departmen- 
tal parent-teachers' associations are among the pos- 
sibilities. 

2. By making the Sunday school itself a center 
of Christian activity as well as of Christian instruc- 
tion. It is wasteful for the school of a church to 
confine its contact with its pupils to one hour on 
Sunday which is given over wholly to instruction, 
and to leave the leadership of the active, social life 
of these same pupils to other organizations which 
are sympathetic, indeed, with its purposes, but whose 
plans are independent and uncorrected. 

My next - door neighbor is a minister, whose 
church has the laudable custom of presenting Bibles, 
on Children's Day, to those of its children who 
have reached the age of seven and have learned to 
read. He marks a verse for each child, as a per- 
sonal message. For one boy this year he marked 
the exhortation in i Timothy, "Exercise thyself unto 
godliness: for bodily exercise is profitable for a 
little ; but godliness is profitable for all things, hav- 
ing promise of the life which now is, and of that 
which is to come." He received the following note 
from this boy: 

"Dear Dr. M : I have found the verse you 

marked in my Bible, i Timothy 4:7, 8. I am learn- 
ing by practicing how to play ball and how to ride 
a horse, and last summer I learned to swim and row. 
I will try to practice to be good, as the verse says. 
Lovingly, Joe." 



APPLYING THE LESSON 179 

FOR INVESTIGATION AND DISCUSSION 

1. What are some of the differences between the three 
types of lessons referred to at the beginning of this chap- 
ter? 

2. Does the Sunday school use lessons of all three types? 
Give examples. 

3. Describe ways in which the Sunday school may seek 
better correlation of effort with the parents of its pupils. 

4. Describe ways in which the Sunday school may be- 
come a center of Christian activity as well as of Christian 
instruction. 

FOR FURTHER READING 

There is a splendid book on "The Lesson in Apprecia- 
tion" by F. H. Hayward; and all the books on story-tell- 
ing apply here, the best being by Sara C. Bryant, Kath- 
erine D. Cather and E. P. St. John. With respect to 
drill lessons, most help will be gotten from H. J. Watt's 
"Economy and Training of Memory" and S. H. Rowe's 
"Habit-Formation and the Science of Teaching." The 
thinking or problem lesson is discussed in any good modern 
text upon pedagogy, such as Bagley's "The Educative 
Process," Strayer's "The Teaching Process" or Strayer 
and Norsworthy's "How to Teach," and McMurry's 
"How to Study." The theory which underlies the appli- 
cation to life of the Sunday school curriculum is best stated 
in G. A. Coe's notable book on "A Social Theory of 
Religious Education," which bids fair to become a classic; 
and is embodied in Hugh Hartshorne's "Childhood and 
Character" and W. L. Lawrance's "The Social Emphasis 
in Religious Education." 



CHAPTER XXIV 

CLASS INSTRUCTION AND CLASS 
ACTIVITY 

OUR ideals for the Sunday school are growing. 
The time was, not so long ago, when most 
churches were content to gather their pupils each 
Sunday, to be instructed for a brief period in the 
Uniform lesson which the International Lesson Com- 
mittee had promulgated for that day, and which the 
teachers had studied together at some time during 
the previous week. The work of the Sunday school 
was conceived to be that of instruction merely; and 
the Biblical material selected for this purpose was 
ungraded. 

To-day, the phrase "religious education" has be- 
come current among us. It stands for two ideas that 
are ultimately one : for the inclusion of religion in 
the education of our children, and for the use of 
educational methods in the propagation of religion 
from generation to generation. Churches have 
come to see that they have an educational as well 
as a religious function in the community; and that 
there is a sense in which they share with the public 
school a common task. So we have come to look 
upon the Sunday school as the church's school of 
religious education, and to expect it to match up, at 
least fairly well, with the public school. 

1 80 



CLASS INSTRUCTION AND ACTIVITY 181 

The application of educational principles and 
standards to the work of the Sunday school, in our 
day, has brought about expansion in several direc- 
tions. It has introduced graded lessons and graded 
departmental organization. It has brought better 
methods of instruction, and has encouraged initiative 
and experiment in the field of religious pedagogy. It 
has secured new buildings and more adequate mate- 
rial equipment. It has enriched the curriculum by the 
addition of such extra-Biblical material as is needed 
to fit young people to know and to do God's will in 
these days of world-wide missionary effort, of vast 
social problems and of possible social regeneration 
that may bring the world measurably nearer to the 
Kingdom of God. It has helped us to realize the 
necessary place of activity, as well as instruction, in 
the educational work of the Sunday school. 

Education in general is by activity quite as much 
as by instruction, by training in habit as well as by 
the acquiring of ideas. Indeed, ideas that come just 
by hearsay are never quite as clear as those that are 
wrought out in active experience ; and instruction sel* 
dom "takes" that does not rouse the pupil to some 
form of activity. This is preeminently true in the 
field of moral and religious education. We gain re- 
ligion, not just by hearing and talking, reading and 
writing, about it, but by living as children of God. 
We become Christians, not merely by comprehending 
Christian doctrines, but by doing Christian deeds in 
Jesus' way. 

But, it may be answered, this is nothing new. The 
church has long recognized this principle in dealing 



182 TALKS TO SUNDAY SCHOOL TEACHERS 

with its children as well as with older folk. Within 
the last half-century, especially, there have sprung up 
within and about our churches a great many organ- 
izations for the training of children and young peo- 
ple in wholesome living and in the attitudes and hab- 
its of Christian service. Boys' clubs and girls' clubs 
of various sorts, gymnasium classes and athletic 
teams, junior, intermediate and senior societies of 
Christian Endeavor and other young people's socie- 
ties of various names, temperance societies, Bands of 
Hope, Bands of Mercy, Boys' Brigades, Boy Scouts, 
Girl Scouts, Campfire Girls, Pathfinders, Bluebirds, 
Knights of King Arthur, Queens of Avalon, King's 
Daughters, mission-study groups, mission bands and 
missionary societies of various ages — the list might 
be multiplied almost indefinitely. 

All this is true. The rise and prosperity of these 
organizations is evidence both of the inadequacy of 
the Sunday school's policy of mere instruction and of 
the church's recognition of the principle of activity. 
These organizations have met real needs. And they 
have rendered, and are rendering, splendid service to 
the children and young people of this land, and 
through them to the Kingdom of God. 

But the time has come to take the next step; and 
churches everywhere are beginning to take it. There 
are limitations in the common situation where the 
Sunday school does nothing but instruct and the ac- 
tive Christian life of its pupils is shaped by these 
other organizations. One is that in some churches 
these organizations operate more or less independ- 
ently, without relation to the Sunday school, and with 



CLASS INSTRUCTION AND ACTIVITY 183 

policies and programs determined far more by their 
district, state and national affiliations than by their 
place within the local church's educational system. 
Another is that these organizations may duplicate 
work, overlap, compete with one another, fail to 
observe proper age boundaries, pull at cross-pur- 
poses, or leave gaps where groups of a certain age 
or sex are unprovided for. The most serious limita- 
tion is that, even though the contingencies just men- 
tioned be guarded against, this situation leaves in- 
struction and activity sundered — the Sunday school 
with a program of instruction unapplied in the group 
life of its pupils, and the other organizations with 
programs of activity unrelated to the instruction 
which their members are receiving week after week 
in the Sunday school. 

What is the next step ? It is for the Sunday school 
to enlarge its educational policy and program to in- 
clude activity as well as instruction; either to take 
over the functions of these organizations or — what 
may be better — to preserve their identity and retain 
their virtues by incorporating them into its own life 
as class or departmental societies, or by affiliating 
them with itself in whatever way may prove to be 
practicable; and thus to maintain a unified and con- 
sistent program of religious education, which makes 
possible correlated instruction and activity, impres- 
sion and expression, for pupils of every grade. 

Lest this be deemed to be mere theory, let me 
quote from the answers returned by pastors to an 
inquiry put by the Commission on Moral and Reli- 
gious Education of one of the denominations: 



184 TALKS TO SUNDAY SCHOOL TEACHERS 

"All of these organizations except the two En- 
deavor societies are carried on under the supervision 
of the Sunday school. We endeavor to coordinate 
and relate all the educational work of the church.' ' 

"I would have every club center about some spe- 
cific group or Sunday school class, thus heading up 
all the young people's groups in the Sunday school, 
making it carry both the impressional and expres- 
sional aspects." 

"Strengthen all Sunday school class organizations 
and clubs. Develop the social life of these and of 
the departments of the Sunday school until adequate 
provision is made for all the social needs of youth 
through the Sunday school. Inaugurate a perpetual 
campaign to enroll every member of every other or- 
ganization in the Sunday school." 

"Our principle is to center all social and educa- 
tional work in the Sunday school, the name of which 
we plan to change accordingly to Church School." 

"For the expressional side of our classes in the 
middle teens and older we have organized a Sun- 
day School Federation taking the place of the Y. P. 
S. C. E. Its unit of membership is not the individual 
but a Sunday school class with its teacher. It is> 
working well and having a most interesting develop- 
ment." 

The details of organization and readjustment in- 
volved in this expansion of the Sunday school's edu- 
cational policy will of course vary with the local situ- 
ation and its problems and opportunities. The fun- 
damental principle is : ( i ) to make possible for each 
group of pupils not simply a social life that is whole- 



CLASS INSTRUCTION AND ACTIVITY 185 

some, natural and enjoyable, but opportunities for 
real Christian service in the measure of their ability, 
and guidance in meeting the actual situations and 
solving the problems of their own every-day world; 
(2) to keep this active aspect of the group's relig- 
ious education in as close correlation as possible with 
their instruction, so that what they learn may help 
them to act wisely and well, and what they want to 
do may give them a motive for learning. 

This principle involves the recognition of the Sun- 
day school class as a natural unit of group activity as 
well as of group instruction. The degree to which 
classes should be formally organized for service de- 
pends, of course, upon the age of the pupils. There 
are some aspects of the pupils' activity, moreover, 
for which the department constitutes the better unit, 
and other aspects that may best be undertaken by 
the school as a whole. But this is only to say that the 
active side of the religious education of our children 
calls for the same fundamental forms of grouping 
that we have found best suited for purposes of in- 
struction. 

The principle involves the use by the various 
classes, to a greater or less extent, of week-day hours 
as well as the Sunday session. It demands teachers 
who are not only well-trained intellectually and de- 
voted spiritually but possess qualities of leadership 
as well. But these requirements are in no sense ob- 
stacles. Churches are using week-day hours now for 
the active moral and religious education of their chil- 
dren, but according to plans that are for the most 
part unrelated to the instruction of the Sunday 



186 TALKS TO SUNDAY SCHOOL TEACHERS 

school. The proposal is to correlate week-day .and 
Sunday, social life and religious instruction; and to 
make the same person both teacher and group-leader. 

Our public schools are rapidly developing new 
methods for the motivation of their work. By cen- 
tering the pupils' reading, composition, oral lan- 
guage, history, geography and arithmetic about con- 
crete projects or experiences in which the group is 
cooperatively interested, they bring reality and zest 
as well as efficiency into the classroom. The Sunday 
school may well learn from them at this point. 
Through its leadership in the active group life of 
its pupils it can do more than apply, it can motivate 
instruction. It can rouse its pupils to eager interest 
in what it teaches, if they can see that this has a 
bearing upon their projects and activities. 

But what shall we do, one will ask, with that ma- 
terial of instruction which has no bearing upon the 
active life of our pupils? Its lack of bearing is 
pretty good evidence that it does not fit your pupils 
and had better be eliminated from the work of your 
grade. It may belong somewhere else. One of the 
happy results of the correlation of class instruction 
and class activity, we may confidently expect, will be 
the production in time of better-graded, more vital 
curricula for the Sunday school. We need nothing 
more right now than teachers of initiative, knowl- 
edge and good sense who are able and willing to de- 
vise plans of action and correlated courses of study 
for their own pupils, to try out new methods and 
materials, to estimate and report results, and so to 
aid in the revision of our present graded courses and 



CLASS INSTRUCTION AND ACTIVITY 187 

in the creation of new courses. Curricula, in re- 
ligious as in public education, are forged by ex- 
perience. 

FOR INVESTIGATION AND DISCUSSION 

1. Describe the changes which have been brought about 
in the work of the Sunday school by the application, in late 
years, of educational principles and standards. 

2. Discuss the need, from an educational point of view, 
of correlating activity and instruction in the curriculum of 
the church's school. 

3. What are some of the limitations and incoordinations 
involved in the common situation where the church's so- 
cieties and clubs for children and young people bear no 
relation to the Sunday school? 

4. What are some of the practical problems involved 
in the attempt to center education through activity as well 
as education by instruction in the Sunday school? 

5. What principles of motivation are now being found 
profitable by the public schools? In what degree can the 
Sunday school profit from these principles, and employ 
like methods? 

6. Are our present Sunday school curricula satisfactory? 
Give reasons for your answer. How can we get better 
curricula? 

FOR FURTHER READING 

For a good discussion of what the public schools are doing 
in this regard, read H. B. and G. M. Wilson: "The 
Motivation of School Work." The fundamental book on 
the theory of religious education, from this point of view, 
is G. A. Coe: "A Social Theory of Religous Education"; 
on the practical problems of organization, W. S. Athearn: 



188 TALKS TO SUNDAY SCHOOL TEACHERS 

"The Church School." Others well worth reading are T. 
W. Galloway: "The Use of Motives in Teaching Morals 
and Religion," and W. N. Hutchins: "Graded Social Ser- 
vice in the Sunday School." 



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